Tobias Saying Farewell to His Father by Bouguereau Poster

Tobias Saying Farewell to His Father by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1860, is an oil on canvas painting based on the story from the Book of Tobit in the Bible. The old man Tobit had lost his sight and been condemned to poverty with his wife, Anna, on the right of the composition. Tobit sent his son Tobias to the land of Medea to retrieve their money, where a relative of theirs was plagued by a demon. Along the way the archangel Raphael intercedes to aid Tobias in the form of a young human man, the angelic figure on the left. Bouguereau’s classical technique creates a powerful image of human drama, filial piety, angelic intercession, and Biblical storytelling. 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 modern art, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.