William-Adolphe Bouguereau
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Bouguereau was one of the most influential painters in Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was the winner of the coveted Prix de Rome in 1850; a medalist at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855; a first-prize winner at the Paris Salon in 1857; a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1859, and subsequently an officer of the legion in 1876 and in the same year he was appointed as a life member of the powerful Academy of Fine Arts. He was also awarded the Grand Medal of Honor at the Salon in 1885, the year he painted this canvas.
Bouguereau’s depictions of children and peasants such as The Young Shepherdess are intentionally ambiguous and were left open to many interpretations even at the time they were painted. A taste for rural subjects in art has a long tradition in France, late-nineteenth-century urbanites found charm in rural subjects whose simple ways and tastes they both envied and mocked. Bouguereau’s version of rural life, however, was sanitized. The prettily dressed, clean-footed, and tidy young model looks more Montparnasse than Montauban. In addition, the sexualization of the model amplified by the strap that has fallen off her shoulder underscores a stereotype of academic painting– that a shepherdess such as this had rural virtues that were somehow more “natural” than those of city dwellers.
The Young Shepherdess will be featured in The San Diego Museum of Art’s exhibition which opens today: Bouguereau & America. The exhibition will feature nearly 40 canvases depicting modern interpretations of classical subjects by the popular French academic artist William Adolphe Bouguereau and will reexamine the work of this long-neglected artist, thus allowing a view unencumbered by modernist bias. This is the first exhibition in nearly 30 years to bring together many of the artist’s most important works. Bouguereau & America was previously on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, which co-organized the exhibition. The designated hashtag for the exhibition is #BougAtSDMA.
P.S. The shepherdess is very young, almost a child. See famous painters and their children here <3