William Bouguereau

Goupil & Cie (acquired directly from the artist, November 27, 1883, no. 16849, as Orpheline)
M. Auban (or Alban) Moët of Épernay (acquired from the above on December 24, 1883)
Hammer Galleries, New York (in the 1970s)
Sale: The Bouguereau Collection, 19th Century European Paintings from a Distinguished Private Collector, Sotheby's, New York, May 7, 1998, lot 41, illustrated
Private Collection, United States (acquired at the above sale)

Franqueville, Le Premier siècle de l'Institut, Paris, 1895
"William Bouguereau," Médaillons Bordelais, n.d., series 3, no. 65, n.p. (with illustrations by Louis Blayot)
Mark Steven Walker, "William-Adolphe Bouguereau, A Summary Catalogue of the Paintings," William-Adolphe Bouguereau, L'Art Pompier, exh. cat., Borghi & Co., New York, 1991, p. 72
Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau, Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work, New York, 2010, p. 220, no. 1883/08, illustrated p. 221
Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau, His Life and Works, New York, 2010, illustrated p. 435, pl. 283

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has an old lining but the surface may have been cleaned more recently. Under ultraviolet light, although the paint layer is slightly unevenly cleaned, there are no apparent retouches and it is certainly more than likely that the work is in extremely good condition. However, Bouguereau does paint thinly in the darker colors of the background, in this case particularly behind the figure in the top third of the picture. Some of this slight thinness may have received some retouching. Overall, the condition is very healthy.
"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."

Orpheline à la fontaine was painted in La Rochelle, Bouguereau's birthplace, during his summer holiday there. By the 1880's, now with fewer obligations, he sought refuge from the stifling heat of Paris and during the summer of 1883 Bouguereau completed only four pictures. Orpheline à la fontaine was likely among the first paintings done in the house he had just purchased that year, on the rue Verdière. He transformed the small orangerie in the garden into a studio, but also worked out of doors when the weather permitted, either in his garden or by the seashore, particularly to work up his backgrounds or to study the local flora in Charentes. As Bouguereau told Marius Vachon, his biographer, paintings done in the country, like Orpheline à la fontaine, which he called his traveaux de vacances, were invested with as much love and effort as the grand compositions painted in his Paris studio; as Vachon notes, "not one of his paintings left his studios before he had put everything he could of himself into it," (Marius Vachon, William Bouguereau, Paris, 1900, p. 133).

Orpheline à la fontaine employs Bouguereau's recurring image of a dreamy or meditative young girl perched on an enclosed spring, a symbol of purity and spirituality. She is a denizen of Bouguereau's celestial and timeless universe. In this particular work the space that she occupies is distinguished by somber tonalities and deliberately sultry colors. The girl's attitude, seen through her gaze and sinuous pose with her arms stretched out in support of her body, betray a certain anxious nostalgia; she appears lost in thought, perhaps contemplating the fate of her parents, as suggested by the title which the painter himself gave the composition.

While the identity of the model is currently unknown, she was probably a local girl from La Rochelle and was the inspiration behind some ten summer pictures painted between 1879 and 1883. Her growth can be traced through the string of paintings made of her, which include Le Crochet (1879), Le déjeuner frugal (1880, private collection), La leçon difficile (1880),  Le nid (1881), and La fille du pêcheur (1882)

As far as is known, no photographs of Orpheline à la fontaine were published during Bouguereau's lifetime and it is not mentioned in the artist's early literature, despite the painstaking list of works prepared by Franqueville. The only viable trace that exists is in the artist's own account books, and Goupil, Boussod & Valadon's old bills of sale.