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William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Portrait of Celine Genevieve Bouguereau Oil Painting

Creator: William Adolphe Bouguereau
Offered by: Solomon Treasure

Description
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French) 1825 - 1905

An Extremely Rare Portrait of Céline Geneviève Bouguereau

signed Wm Bouguereau (lower right)

Oil on canvas

Canvas: 14" x 10"
Framed: 19" x 16"

Provenance: A gift from the artist to Adolphe Bouguereau By inheritance, Catherine Eugénie Autreux Autreux family until 1998 Sale: Christie's, New York, 12 February, 1998, lot 30 Private collection Sale: Phillips, London, 19 June, 2001, lot 97 Private collection Alexander Gallery, New York

Literature: Damien Bartoli and Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work, 2014, no. 1850/15, pp. 22-23, illustrated. Working predominantly within the academic tradition, William-Adolphe Bouguereau earned a strong reputation in his lifetime as a painter of classic subjects and primarily figures. Born in 1825 on the south west coast of France, he studied painting sporadically throughout his childhood before moving to Paris at the age of twenty to formally study under François-Édouard Picot, an established painter who worked in the neoclassical tradition. Later, he was admitted to the École Royale des Beaux-Arts, and by 1850, after two failed attempts, Bouguereau was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome. The prize included a full scholarship to the French Academy in Rome, where he would begin study the following year. From November to December 1850, shortly after winning the prize but before his departure for Italy, Bouguereau was visiting with family in Saint-Martin-en Ré, not far from where he grew up in La Rochelle. While there, he painted portraits of a number of his relatives, including his cousin, Céline Geneviève, depicted here at the age of nineteen. She was the elder daughter of Adolphe Bouguereau, the painter's uncle, and his wife Adelina, both of whom sat for the artist that same year. This small and sensitive portrayal speaks to the artist's humble beginnings as a figure painter, finding sitters in family members who received these tender likenesses as gifts and kept them all their lives.