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William Bouguereau is unquestionably one of history's greatest artistic geniuses. Yet in the past century, his reputation and unparalleled accomplishments have undergone a libelous, dishonest, relentless and systematic assault of immense proportions. His name was stricken from most history texts and when included it was only to blindly, degrade and disparage him and his work. Yet, as we shall see, it was he who single handedly opened the French academies to women, and it was he who was arguably the greatest painter of the human figure in all of art history. His figures come to life like no previous artist has ever before or ever since achieved. He wasn’t just the best ever at painting human anatomy, more importantly he captured the tender and subtlest nuances of personality and mood. Bouguereau caught the very souls and spirits of his subjects much like Rembrandt. Rembrandt is said to have captured the soul of age. Bouguereau captured the soul of youth.
Considering his consummate level of skill and craft, and the fact that the great preponderance of his works are life-size, it is one of the largest bodies of work ever produced by any artist. Add to that the fact that fully half of these paintings are great masterpieces, and we have the picture of an artist who belongs like Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Carravaggio, in the top ranks of only a handful of masters in the entire history of western art. The reason why I place a work of his online here and now is that a Dutch / South African artist, who was greatly influenced by the work of Bougereau, has fallen victim of the renewed wave of intolerant - religion based - suppression, that artists, in our once so tolerant country, have to endure. The artist in question has been accused of producing child porn and his work, result of many years of study and a labour of love, has been confiscated by the Amsterdam District Attorney. Of course we will vigourously resist and fight this infringement on the freedom of thought and art and article 1 of the Dutch constitution. Ad
If you want to study the work of Bougereau and other neoclassic artists in great detail, last imagerotation: september 2nd '08.
I'm not trying to be balanced
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