Bouguereau made more than seven hundred finished works. French painter. From 1838 to 1841 he took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the coll?ge at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the Ecole Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture part-time, under Jean-Paul Alaux. In 1844 he won the first prize for figure painting, which confirmed his desire to become a painter. As there were insufficient family funds to send him straight to Paris he painted portraits of the local gentry from 1845 to 1846 to earn money. In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in the studio of Francois-Edouard Picot. This was the beginning of the standard academic training of which he became so ardent a defender later in life. Such early works as Equality reveal the technical proficiency he had attained even while still training. In 1850 he was awarded one of the two Premier Grand Prix de Rome for Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Bank of the River Araxes (1850; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In December 1850 he left for Rome where he remained at the Villa Medici until 1854, working under Victor Schnetz and Jean Alaux (1786-1864). During this period he made an extensive study of Giotto's work at Assisi and Padua and was also impressed by the works of other Renaissance masters and by Classical art. On his return to France he exhibited the Triumph of the Martyr (1853; Luneville, Mus. Luneville; ) at the Salon of 1854. It depicted St Cecilia's body being carried to the catacombs, and its high finish, restrained colour and classical poses were to be constant features of his painting thereafter. All his works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life. Though he generally restricted himself to classical, religious and genre subjects, he was commissioned by the state to paint Napoleon III Visiting the Flood Victims of Tarascon in 1856   Related Paintings of Adolphe William Bouguereau :. | Saint louis Caring for the Plague Victims (mk26) | Work Interrupted (mk26) | Self-Portrait (mk26) | Bathers | The Shepherdess (mk26) |
Related Artists:
CERQUOZZI, Michelangelo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1602-1660 Italian painter. He was a painter of bambocciate (low-life subjects), battles, small religious and mythological works and still-lifes. He was born of Roman parents, baptized in the parish of S Lorenzo in Lucina and spent his entire life in his native city. A member of the Accademia di S Luca since 1634, Cerquozzi attended meetings of the society as late as 1652. His friends included Domenico Viola, Pietro da Cortona and Giacinto Brandi. More significant were his associations with foreign residents in Rome. According to Baldinucci, Cerquozzi had special affection for the Spanish, owing to the patronage he received from the major-domo of the Spanish Embassy as a youth, and would often don Spanish attire as a sign of his sentiment. His Spanish connections may partly account for the many commissions he later received from patrons identified with Rome's pro-Spanish political faction (Haskell). Cerquozzi enjoyed equally good rapport with northern European residents of Rome. He is documented as having quartered with artists from beyond the Alps, including Paulus Bor and Cornelis Bloemaert, for the bulk of his career.
Francis Towne
English Painter, 1739-1816 was an English water-colour painter. He was born in Isleworth, Middlesex, the son of a corn chandler. Apprenticed to a coach painter in London, he won a design prize from the Society of Arts, and studied for a while at St Martin??s Lane Academy. In 1763 he was employed by a coach painter called Thomas Watson, and went to Exeter on business. He had already begun painting in oils and also taught drawing, and now he began to accept commissions from wealthy families in Devon. After a tour of north Wales in 1777, undertaken with his friend, the lawyer John White, he began to specialize in water-colours. In 1780 he travelled to Rome and from there to Naples. On his return to Devon, he was asked by Sir Thomas and Lady Acland of Killerton to paint some views in Devon and North Wales, and in 1786 he went on a painting tour of the Lake District
FRANCIA, Francesco
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1450-1517 He turned to painting c. 1485, and his first works already testify to the considerable technical accomplishment and gentle religious sensibility that remained constants of his art. His major surviving paintings are altarpieces, mostly images of the Virgin and saints, initially done for Bologna and later for nearby centres, notably Parma, Modena, Ferrara and Lucca. He also painted many small-scale devotional works and a few portraits. The apochryphal anecdote reported by Vasari that Francia died on seeing Raphael's altarpiece of St Cecilia