What must it feel like to have the power of this kind of beauty at the tip of your paintbrush? To stand back and look at something you have painted that looked like any of these. I would have loved to have met him.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
William Bouguereau
Thanks to Mariana of Gatochy's Blog, I found William Bouguereau on the Art Renewal Center. I can not tell you what it does to me to look at a Bouguereau painting in real life. It is truly spiritual, I get chills and usually get teary eyed. His paintings are so real, beyond real, the look in his subjects eyes, their hands, the color and translucence of their skin...well, it is usually all too much for me. I am lucky to have seen many of his works, in San Antonio (btw, the museum is a wonderful experience as architecture -- the building is a converted brewery), and San Francisco. Another resource for his paintings. Museums and Public Art Galleries listing (I don't see the San Antonio museum listed).
What must it feel like to have the power of this kind of beauty at the tip of your paintbrush? To stand back and look at something you have painted that looked like any of these. I would have loved to have met him.
What must it feel like to have the power of this kind of beauty at the tip of your paintbrush? To stand back and look at something you have painted that looked like any of these. I would have loved to have met him.
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5 comments:
How positively serendipitous - I happen to have a reproduction, Les Noisettes, hanging in one of my spare rooms.
I've frequently had thoughts similar to yours when I look at it. It so totally draws you in that you actually feel like the subjects will come to life.
To imagine a human being, a mere mortal, actually painting something so ethereal, so sublime and so full of depth and emotion, is truly amazing.
Beautiful paintings. Even on the computer they seem to glow with life. The faces are so pure. Love them.
you've probably already seen it but I have a print of a woman sewing by Bouguereau on the wall in my bedroom. It's one of my favorites. I'm sorry but I don't know what it's called.
His work is wonderful, isn't it? I love how the people in his paintings are "real" but beautiful; statuesque, but not in the modern skinny top-model sense of the word. By far and away my favorite painter.
I have seen the painting with the angels at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Apparently the Salon Painting, which is huge, was on loan and had been undergoing a thourough cleaning. Right next to it was another exact copy, but much smaller. The smaller painting was reproduced by W.B. in person, for sale to private collectors, something quite commonly done in those days.
The skin tones on the smaller canvas were nice, but once the grime of time was cleaned off, these same colors just glowed on the larger canvas.
As a portrait artist, I have been studying his work and expecially his palette and I am always amazed at his mastery of skin tones.
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