(November 30, 1825 - August 19, 1905) was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects with a heavy emphasis on the female human body. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France on November 30, 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants. He seemed destined to join the family business but for the intervention of his uncle Eugene, a Roman Catholic priest, who taught him classical and Biblical subjects, and arranged for Bouguereau to go to high school. Bouguereau showed artistic talent early on and his father was convinced by a client to send him to the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, where he won first prize in figure painting for a depiction of Saint Roch. To earn extra money, he designed labels for jams and preserves  Related Paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau :. | The Goose Girl | Portrait of Zenaide de Cambaceres | Portrait of Leonie Bouguereau | L Etoile Perdue | At the Edge of the Brook |
Related Artists:
john henry henshall,RWS
1856-1928
Christian Rohlfs
German Painter, 1849-1938 German painter and printmaker. He studied painting at the Kunstschule in Weimar (1870). Prolonged illness forced him to interrupt his studies, which he resumed in 1874 under Ferdinand Schauss (1832-1916) and Alexandre Struys (1852-1941). Through visits to Paris in the 1870s, he came into contact with the art of the Barbizon school, painting en plein-air on his return to Weimar. Under the influence of Struys he painted figurative works, such as Roman Builders (1879; Menster, Westfel. Landesmus.), and nudes in the tradition of academically enlightened Realism. In 1881 Rohlfs worked in a studio under Max Thedy (1858-1924). From c. 1883 he painted mainly landscapes with the approval of Ludwig von Gleichen-Russwurm (1836-1901), who was studying with Theodor Hagen (1842-1919), and was influenced in an indirect way by Albert Brendel (1827-95), who had taught at Weimar from 1875. He often chose formats that were unusually large for landscape paintings in this period, presenting landscape in a similar way to history painting. Atmosphere and light played an important role even in these early pictures, for example Sawmill at Ehringsdorf on the Ilm (930x780 mm, 1883; Weimar, Schlossmus.). From 1884 he worked as an independent painter. After 1885 colour became increasingly important for its own sake; light and shade were suggested purely by colour, which was applied in impasto spots and brushstrokes to create chiaroscuro values that determined the form, for example Wild Garden near Weimar (1888; Weimar, Schlossmus.). By the end of the 1880s he had developed an independent style parallel to Impressionist painting. When he saw works by Monet exhibited in Weimar in 1897, these corroborated his own efforts.
Parton, Ernest
American, 1845-1933