"Some of his earlier work is tolerable, if uninspired. The vast majority of it, though, is way overrated. By contrast, I don't know if there's a single Bouguereau painting I've seen that I haven't at least reasonably liked, and many of them I just adore."
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I recall a show of Picasso's formative years from childhood to age 25 that was damn fascinating. Alas, he peaked too soon, after Le Demioselles d'Auvignon it was all downhill from there.
Funny how Bouguereau has made such a comeback. He dominated the French Academy to an unhealthy extent in his day. The smart set spent nearly a century bad-mouthing him and everything he stood for, but he was always popular amongst us peasants. I do however fault him for posing his models indoors then moving the scene outside. Winslow Homer was notably fanatic about plein air natural light.
I didn't mean to imply he was beyond criticism. And my praise was perhaps a bit too strong: I looked through some of his works again and there are some I don't particularly care for. But then again, very few people can produce very many great works of significance in any field without an occasional work that isn't so great. And even the works of Bouguereau that I don't particularly like aren't really bad--I just don't like them.
Sometimes Bouguereau's lighting isn't perfect, though it can be hard to tell looking at a computer picture of a hundred-year-old painting what the real thing looked like when painted. Looking through a bunch of his paintings, the lighting isn't consistently better on indoor poses than outdoor ones; there are some lighting miscues on both. Nonetheless, there is something about many of his paintings that is simply indescribably marvelous.