Bruce Receives Gift Of Bouguereau Painting

GREENWICH — The Bruce Museum has received a new addition for its permanent collection, “Faun and Bacchante” (1860), an oil painting by the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, (1825-1905). The painting, which is currently on view in the museum, is a recent gift of Steven A. Cohen and Alexandra M. Cohen to the Bruce Museum.

“The Bruce’s new painting is a superb example of Bouguereau’s exploration of classical ideas, subject matter and form,” said Peter C. Sutton, executive director of the Bruce Museum. “In recent decades interest in Bouguereau’s work has grown dramatically, perhaps with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the 19th Century passion for history painting and admiration for the traditional artist’s craft and technique.”

Born in 1825 in La Rochelle, France, William-Adolphe Bouguereau was academically trained in Bordeaux and Paris in the 1840s. He received first prize in the coveted Prix de Rome competition in 1850 and embarked on a hugely successful career. He exhibited paintings at the Paris Salon regularly, including “Faun and Bacchante” in 1861, the year after it was painted.

Soon, museums and collectors around the world eagerly paid high prices for Bouguereau’s work. His large and varied oeuvre includes paintings of mythological, biblical and allegorical subjects as well as sentimental genre scenes. Often juxtaposed by critics with the Impressionists, who were regarded as progressive because of their celebration of the heroism of modern life, Bouguereau’s elegant neo-Grec and vaguely literary paintings, complemented by the artist’s staunchly traditional public stance, earned him the disdain of the Modernist movement and of most writers throughout the first three quarters of the 20th Century. Yet many American painters who subsequently joined the Impressionist movement and other modern schools initially studied with academic painters like Bouguereau, to whom they owed an under-appreciated debt.

Robert Henri, whose paintings will be on view during the Bruce Museum exhibition “Painterly Controversy: William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri” (on view January 27 through April 29, 2007), studied with Bouguereau at the Académie Julian in Paris between 1888 and 1891. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that Matisse studied with Bouguereau. Robert Henri’s connection is especially appropriate considering the Bruce Museum’s exhibition’s emphasis on teaching and how artists absorb and reinterpret their mentors’ instructions.

“Faun and Bacchante” does not depict a specific story but rather presents two classical figures embracing in the softly lit bower of a forest interior. Their bodies recall classical sculpture in their poses, proportions and subtle modeling. The faun is only identifiable by his pointed ears; his lower half lacks the goat’s anatomy characteristic of these mythical creatures.

Since Bouguereau scrupulously studied antique sculpture and carefully planned his paintings down to the smallest details, his modification of the faun undoubtedly was a conscious decision.

Bouguereau infused his paintings with bright local colors, inspired by the painters of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, but his careful draftsmanship in the lines and contours of the figures in “Faun and Bacchante” nods to the tradition of French academic painters. Complementing the smooth and meticulously detailed finish of the figures and their attributes is Bouguereau’s freer evocation of the landscape and foreground.

The painting has an interesting provenance. Commissioned by the Marcotte de Quivières family, the painting’s next two owners were American, reflecting American collectors’ enthusiasm for Bouguereau.

After the painting passed through a New York gallery and an additional owner, two married restauranteurs purchased it in 1958. William Henry and Frances Wilke Haussner, both German immigrants, operated a popular Baltimore restaurant for 70 years, covering its walls with paintings and decorative arts. Focusing most heavily on 19th Century European paintings, especially academic works — of which “Faun and Bacchante” is an excellent example — the Haussners also selected American and Old Master paintings as well as sculptures for their restaurant.

In the late 1990s, the couple closed the restaurant and sold their collection at auction. “Faun and Bacchante” went to auction again in 2001, at which time the Cohens purchased it.