Breton Brother and Sister by Bouguereau Postcard

Breton Brother and Sister by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1871, is an oil on canvas painting of a young Breton girl in traditional costume holding her younger brother in her lap. Posed like a family portrait photo, the siblings look earnestly at the viewer and smile in their red cap and white bonnet. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905) was a French painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Villa Medici in Rome. He exhibited with great success in the French Salon and became one of most renowned and wealthy artists of his era. Bouguereau worked in the French Academic tradition, a school of late 19th century modern painters who concentrated on the human figure and classical subjects in highly polished works of optical realism. His main interest was the female figure, usually rendered in classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of Modernism, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.