The Elder Sister
by Eric Glaser
Title
The Elder Sister
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"The Elder Sister"
Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)
Title: The Elder Sister
Note: The artist's daughter Henriette and son Paul served as models.
Date: 1869
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: Height: 1,301.75 mm (51.25 in); Width: 971.55 mm (38.25 in)
Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX USA
Credit Line: given by Anonymous Lady in memory of her father
The young girl, gazing intently at the beholder while tenderly holding a baby on her lap, is endowed with an almost inexplicably beguiling beauty. William Bouguereau was the quintessential successful academic painter. His canvases were in high demand by both European and American collectors, and his fame has been rekindled of late.
Executed with extraordinary painterly skill, The Elder Sister is a sentimental scene for which the artist's daughter Henriette and son Paul served as models. Bouguereau has stripped them of all imperfections, portraying them as children with perfect features, dressed in clean garments, and posed against an idyllic rural background. The composition is unified and balanced, with the children’s arms and legs converging nearly at the center of the canvas. Bouguereau’s smooth paint application and diligent attention to detail result in an almost hyperrealistic representation. Although his works were originally inspired by classicism and antique idealism as transmitted through the works of the masters of the High Renaissance, images like this one present an emphatically Victorian ideal.
Text Credit: Google Arts & Culture
This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
March 13th, 2021
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