Bouguereau and academic art

Since this is a personal blog, I thought that I would branch it out a little bit. That's why, in addition to the notes about the regular Mass in the church, I have begun to add items from the various books I read from time to time. And I shall begin to add some bits of amateurish art-work, such as this Divine Mercy thing I did once in seminary.

But this post is about my favourite of all the painters I have ever known. I've only been able to find one biography of him, in the Nottingham City library, and I discovered that he was one of the last academic masters in France in the nineteenth century, before the advent of the new Impressionist movement. Impressionism caused the death of academic instruction in painting and, overnight, popular artists like Bouguereau fell into obscurity. The very museums moved their work into storage, where it was rediscovered decades later. It's only very recently that academic realism has begun to flourish again, through atelier instruction and the classical realist movement. Now impressionist art can be exciting, but it cannot compare with the precision of the old Masters. Here are two of Bouguereau's masterpieces. The first I often use as a background for my mobile telephone screen; it is called the Song of the Angels. The second I always look for when I visit Birmingham, on the way to see my family, for the original is in the City art gallery; it is called Charity.