?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
WILLIAM-ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU Diana.
Pencil and white chalk on tan wove paper. 324x203 mm; 12 3/4x8 inches. Signed in ink, lower right right recto.
Acquired Sotheby's, New York, July 16, 1992, sale 1403, lot 323, by the current owner.
Bouguereau (1825-1905) was a French academic artist known for his his realistic genre and nude paintings. He showed artistic talent from a young age, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he excelled at the Neo-classical, academic style that the Academy promoted. Bouguereu won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1850 at the age of 26; during his 3 year stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, where he studied Renaissance artists firsthand. He continued to gain honors at the Academy throughout his lifetime, achieving Life Member in 1876, and Commander Legion of Honor and Grand Medal of Honor in 1885.
During an era where modernity was shifting artistic norms, Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological scenes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects. He depicted a wide range of female figures throughout his career, including nymphs, goddesses, madonnas, shepherdesses, and bathers, in a manner that was very appealing to his upper class male patrons. Bouguereau typically executed detailed pencil studies and oil sketches in order to perfect his accurate renderings of the human figure.
