BOUGUEREAU William Adolphe (1825-1905) - Lot 12

BOUGUEREAU William Adolphe (1825-1905) Preparatory study for Pietà. Circa. 1875-1876. Oil on canvas pasted on wood panel. H.23 ; L.15,5 cm. William Bouguereau was a painter accustomed to making small studies, enabling him to deepen the tones and color harmony of his compositions. According to the 1984-85 exhibition catalog, Bouguereau produced several studies for this same Pietà. These, still in the possession of the painter's heirs, confirm the importance of the preparatory work for this work. When exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1876, William Bouguereau's monumental Pietà was unanimously praised by critics for its sincere emotion and poignant devotion (Doucet, Les peintres français, Paris, n.d., p. 164). More than a century later, the painting remains one of the most moving interpretations not only of Christ's life, but also of man's personal tragedy. The Pietà's immediate inspiration came not from Bouguereau's devout Christianity, but from the painful loss of his eldest son Georges, who died on July 19, 1875 at the age of sixteen. After spending several months overwhelmed by grief, Bouguereau sought to lift his spirits by immersing himself totally in his art. For several weeks, he pondered compositions that would allow him to fully express his feelings while commemorating the life and death of his son. His sketchbooks from this period show a stream of excited and even angry passages, with dozens of drawings illustrating his slow, deliberate plan to paint his version of a Pietà. After an uninterrupted period of compulsive work, Bouguereau seems to have completed this magnum opus in just two months (M. Vachon, "Avant le Salon", La France, March 20, 1876). Provenance: Cáceres Collection. Private Collection Anne Segalen, 1983.