On the 30th of November, 1825, William Bouguereau was born. His father was a businessman who ran a small wine store and wanted William to enter the family business. Théodore's business really thrived and it caused the family to languish in endless quarrels compounded their difficulties with finances which placed them in dire straights. Mired in economic worry, couple sent the children off to stay with his uncle Eugène Bouguereau. Even at this early age, William spent his time illuminating his school books and notbooks with drawings.

His Uncle, whom William considered his surrogate father and mentor, introduced the youngster to Latin and French literature, encouraging him to develop an interest in classical culture, an interest that the painter continued to pursue his whole life.

He received his first drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a young professor who had been a pupil of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and was a committed classicist. Sage instilled the precepts of Ingres in his students, presenting the life of an artist as an endless competitive struggle. Bouguereau became convinced that persistent hard work was necessary in order to gain a superior mastery over the technical problems which could have shackled the free reign of his imagination.

In 1841, his Uncle Eugène decided to go into the olive oil trade in Bordeaux. William was sent back to his family and for a short time William participated in his father's business, keeping the accounting books.

William wanted to take drawing and painting at the Bordeaux municipal art school and after much prodding and on the advice of family friends, he was allowed to attend part-time for two years. His progress was in the school was so rapid that he won the 1844 prize for "Best Historical Painting" while competing against older students who were enrolled full-time. It wasn't long after this, with the financial help of his Uncle Eugène, that William moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts.

After several tries in the entries of the Paris salon, William became one of the most talked about young artists in Paris and he continued to move upward. He became a highly sought after portraitist, decorative painter, and in 1888 he was appointed a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Contrary to popular belief, many of Bouguereau's drawings were rendered with the aid of an optical device known as the chambre claire. This instrument, by means of prisms, allowed the tracing of a subject's outlines, as observed by the artist, directly onto a drawing board. Used as an artist might use a photograph today, the chambre claire permitted the artist to readily and quickly reproduce certain details of nature which could be used later in the studio as details in a painting. Bouguereau would draw quickly, and keep the drawings by his side while working on the figures so he would have a well-balanced composition sketch.

Bouguereau also made drapery studies by posing a mannequin in place of the model and experimenting with the folds of cloth until a disposition was found that enhanced the underlying forms. Sometimes, especially for small or single-figure paintings, Bouguereau drew the model already draped. Most of his figure drawings were executed in pencil or charcoal and often heightened with white. The support for them was heavyweight toned paper of medium grain. This allowed Bouguereau to dispense with the problem of rendering troublesome halftones which were more easily and accurately realized in the painted studies.

Bouguereau's reputation in France was quite low. He was scorned by progressive painters and art critics of the day, who saw his art as "slick and artificial surfaced". of of Edgar Degas and the of Impressionists termed his type of painting "Bouguereaute' (Bouguereau-ized). He was scorned as one of the most prominent representatives of everything the new movement opposed: high technical finish, narrative content, sentimentality and a reliance on tradition.

Bouguereau was one of the most reviled and beloved French painters of his time. His work was widely collected by the English and especially by the Americans in spite of the critizism he experienced in his own country.

William Bouguereau continued painting and exhibiting until his death in 1905.

Note: Bouguereau postcards were produced in abundance. He was so widely known, many times, there was no name written under the image. On today's market we see his art cards mistaken for french nude photographs. The works shown here were made into "Salon de Paris" art cards during his lifetime.