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ADOLPHE WILLIAM BOUGUEREAU
French, 18251905
The Goose Girl, 1891
Oil on canvas. 60 x 29 in. (152 x 74 cm)
Gift of Dr. Henry P. DeForest. 65.365
Bouguereau was trained and worked within the French academic tradition,
whose standards of excellence were based on neo-classical interpretations
of antiquity and whose models of style and interpretation were the work
of Jacques Louis David and J. A. D. Ingres. He was almost an exact contemporary
of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose Almeh Performing the Sword
Dance is also in the Johnson Museum. Like Gérôme, Bouguereau
was an excellent draftsman and meticulous painter, famous for the luminous
quality he gave to the depiction of flesh. He enjoyed great success throughout
his career and unlike many other academic painters, did not slide into obscurity
during the twentieth century. Bouguereau specialized in paintings of beautiful
women, innocent peasant girls, serene Madonnas, and pristine nudes. He was
very popular with American collectors, who appreciated his detailed style
and idealized subjects. The Goose Girl was purchased by one such
collector, Mrs. George Frederick Cornell, wife of a cousin of Ezra Cornell.
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