William Bouguereau

Goupil & Cie, Paris (no. 17617, acquired directly from the artist on December 9, 1885)
Lawrie & Son, London (October 8, 1886)
Mrs. Ruth Maguire, New York
Scott and Fowles, New York (and sold: Parke-Bernet, New York, March 28, 1946, lot 106, illustrated)
Sale: Christie's, New York, October 29, 1986, lot 71, illustrated
Spring Sources Fine Art, Encino, California
Acquired from the above in 1987

Marius Vachon, W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1900, p. 156
Mark Steven Walker, "William-Adolphe-Bouguereau, A Summary Catalogue of the Paintings," in William-Adolphe Bouguereau L'Art Pompier, exh. cat., New York, 1992, p. 72

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This canvas has been lined using glue as and adhesive. The paint layer is stable. The varnish has been evenly applied to the paint layer, although it is possibly a little dull and heavy. The painting itself is in very nice condition with no real issues visible either from abrasion or from paint loss. There is a small group of retouches in the upper left side of the girl's forehead which may diminish a highlight in the forehead. There is another group of retouches in the background on the right between the head and the right edge, addressing what may be a slight area of thinness. Other than this there are no further retouches. The picture could be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In his sensitive portrayals of peasant girls Bouguereau elevated the image of France's most humble citizens.  By 1885, when the artist painted Jeune Fille à la Cruche (Young Girl with a Water Jug), France had emerged from decades of great social change. Revolutions had replaced kings with presidents, transformed farms into factories, and the demands of modern business threatened the agrarian way of life. Yet, easing such concerns were finely painted portraits of country children, like the present work's model, sitting alone on a rough-hewn stone bench, resting from her task of carrying a clay water jug. The young girl looks directly at the viewer, her wide brown eyes and heavy brows held in a pensive expression, hair tied back with a burgundy ribbon to showcase her heart-shaped face. The roughly woven blue and white cloth of the girl's dress coupled with her bare feet suggest her humble means. There is a naturalistic truth to Bouguereau's representation of the young girl, her cheeks slightly flushed from her demanding labor, her small hands unable to surround the thick handle of the weighty jug. The artist frequently referred to his sketchbooks, filled with drawings of the children of the adult Italian models he employed, in order to accurately paint the specific musculature of young bodies (James F. Peck, In the Studios of Paris, William Bouguereau & His American Students, exh. cat., New Haven, 2006, p.1 02). Painted as a full-length portrait and set in a vertical picture space in front of a loosely painted landscape Bouguereau gives his model iconic stature. At the same time, the composition's smooth brushwork erases the presence of the painter, and creates a balance between immobile, static form and rich surface details, textures and color. Without an explicit narrative, the viewer can creatively interpret the work, using the finely described visual details of the girl's soft-shouldered, restive posture and the solid form of the ochre colored jug, nearly half her size.  As such, Jeune Fille à la Cruche combines the real and the idealized, connected yet apart from the daily life of the late nineteenth century.  From the 1880s and throughout the remainder of his career, Bouguereau devoted much of his output to genre works featuring young girls (at least two other works from 1885 feature a brunette model carrying a yellow water jug), and the majority of these canvases, like Jeune Fille à la Cruche, quickly left his studio for notable American collections.