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Lot Essay
At the time that Bouguereau painted Idylle: famille antique he was a rising star on the Paris art scene. After studying with the esteemed French Academic master François Picot, Bouguereau gained admittance to the hallowed halls of Paris' École des Beaux-Arts. In 1849, he exhibited for the first time in the Paris Salon and the following year won the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome. During his time in Italy, Bouguereau traveled extensively, studying the Renaissance masters who inspired his early fascination with classical antiquity, as demonstrated by the present painting.
Bouguereau's early successes led to important commissions from the French state as well as private wealthy patrons who in turn helped bolster the artist's reputation. The financial stability that Bouguereau gained from these commissions allowed him to pursue paintings of his own interest, including Idylle: famille antique.
Without a patron to appease, Bouguereau maintained complete artistic freedom in Idylle: famille antique, transforming a classically-inspired painting into a poignant familial portrait. A young mother sits on the ground, looking up adoringly at her young child. With a hint of a smile, Bouguereau's strapping father holds his son who reaches out to embrace him with outstretched arms. In an idyllic setting framed by a canopy of vines, this affectionate group of figures exudes a tenderness that would come to define Bouguereau's mature work. Adding a note of playfulness to the scene, Bouguereau includes a goat that seems to want to join this loving family as it rises up on its hind legs, its head almost touching the child's.
Bouguereau adopted a similar composition in Pastorale antique: Le retour des champs (fig. 1) and Le départ du berger (fig. 2), a diptych he completed in 1860. In both works, a classically-dressed young man and woman dote on their pudgy child. Alongside the happy family in Pastorale antique, a goat stands looking up at a succulent bunch of grapes held by the young man while in Le départ du berger a wolf accompanies the shepherd and his wife and child. These compositions no doubt pleased Bouguereau and his dealer at the time Jean-Marie Fortuné Paul Durand-Ruel as there are reductions of all three works. The reduction of Idylle: famille antique is now in the collection of the Wadsworth Athenuem Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.
(fig. 1) William Bouguereau, Pastorale antique: Le retour des champs, 1860, (Private collection.)
(fig. 2) William Bouguereau, Le départ du berger, 1860, (Private collection.)
Bouguereau's early successes led to important commissions from the French state as well as private wealthy patrons who in turn helped bolster the artist's reputation. The financial stability that Bouguereau gained from these commissions allowed him to pursue paintings of his own interest, including Idylle: famille antique.
Without a patron to appease, Bouguereau maintained complete artistic freedom in Idylle: famille antique, transforming a classically-inspired painting into a poignant familial portrait. A young mother sits on the ground, looking up adoringly at her young child. With a hint of a smile, Bouguereau's strapping father holds his son who reaches out to embrace him with outstretched arms. In an idyllic setting framed by a canopy of vines, this affectionate group of figures exudes a tenderness that would come to define Bouguereau's mature work. Adding a note of playfulness to the scene, Bouguereau includes a goat that seems to want to join this loving family as it rises up on its hind legs, its head almost touching the child's.
Bouguereau adopted a similar composition in Pastorale antique: Le retour des champs (fig. 1) and Le départ du berger (fig. 2), a diptych he completed in 1860. In both works, a classically-dressed young man and woman dote on their pudgy child. Alongside the happy family in Pastorale antique, a goat stands looking up at a succulent bunch of grapes held by the young man while in Le départ du berger a wolf accompanies the shepherd and his wife and child. These compositions no doubt pleased Bouguereau and his dealer at the time Jean-Marie Fortuné Paul Durand-Ruel as there are reductions of all three works. The reduction of Idylle: famille antique is now in the collection of the Wadsworth Athenuem Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.
(fig. 1) William Bouguereau, Pastorale antique: Le retour des champs, 1860, (Private collection.)
(fig. 2) William Bouguereau, Le départ du berger, 1860, (Private collection.)