Young Mother Gazing at Child by Bouguereau Postcard

Young Mother Gazing at Child by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1871, is an oil painting on canvas of a young woman seated with baby on a blanket in her lap in a domestic kitchen interior. In skirt, bright white bonnet and blouse, the young mother smiles warmly at her child, dinner cooking in a pot in the massive kitchen hearth next to them. The classical, academic realist technique of Bouguereau crafts an image of happy, if sentimental, domestic tranquillity and bonds between mother and child. 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.