Description
Seated on a stone step in the countryside, a young girl has realized that her calling in life is to be an artist. Bouguereau was famous for his innovative depictions of children. In 1900 a critic wrote, "[F]ew artists have represented childhood with more tenderness, charm, and spirit than Bouguereau . . . [H]e has invented the most picturesque, the most pleasing, the most original scenes of an almost endless variety." Bouguereau was no less famous for his remarkably life-like images. Here he convincingly captures the girl's rough clothing, soft skin, and intense gaze. Bouguereau painted this work in La Rochelle, a harbor city on France's west coast. During the later years of his life, Bouguereau—by then wealthy and famous—made a habit of spending summers in La Rochelle. There the artist lived in a mansion he owned near the port, working in a greenhouse he had converted into a studio or in the countryside. While in La Rochelle, Bouguereau chose his models from among farm workers, families of local fishermen, or his own servants.
Provenance
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Accession Number
1996.272
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
Framed: 132 x 99 x 10.6 cm (51 15/16 x 39 x 4 3/16 in.); Unframed: 104 x 71 cm (40 15/16 x 27 15/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of the Frances W. Ingalls Trust
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting French
Background & Context
Background Story
William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) was a French painter known for the precisely painted, idealized manner that made him the most popular and commercially successful painter of the French academic tradition in the late 19th century. A Calling from 1896 depicts a young woman in the precisely painted, idealized manner that distinguishes Bouguereau's best work from the more experimental painting of his avant-garde contemporaries. The 1896 date places this in Bouguereau's late period, when he was still producing the precisely painted, idealized figure paintings that had made him the most popular painter in France, even as the avant-garde was rejecting the academic tradition he represented.
Cultural Impact
A Calling is important in the history of French painting because it demonstrates the precisely painted, idealized manner that Bouguereau maintained as the academic tradition was being challenged by Impressionism and the avant-garde. Bouguereau's precisely painted, idealized figure paintings represent the academic tradition at its most accomplished—the polished surface, the idealized form, the narrative subject—that the avant-garde was rejecting, and the 1896 painting shows this academic tradition in its final, most accomplished phase.
Why It Matters
A Calling is Bouguereau's academic mastery: a young woman rendered in the precisely painted, idealized manner that made him the most popular painter of the French academic tradition. The 1896 painting shows the academic tradition at its most accomplished—the polished surface and idealized form that the avant-garde was rejecting.
