Lot 22
  • 22

William Bouguereau

Estimate
1,000,000 - 1,500,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • William-Adolphe Bouguereau
  • Blessures d'amour
  • signed W-BOUGUEREAU- and dated 1897 (lower right)
  • oil on canvas
  • 75 1/2 by 45 in.
  • 191.8 by 114.3 cm

Provenance

Arthur Tooth & Sons, Paris
Knoedler & Co., New York (acquired from the above, July 1897, no. 8327)
Ferdinand W. Roebling, Trenton, New Jersey (acquired from the above, March 1898)
Mrs. F.W. Roebling (acquired from the above and sold: Kende Galleries, New York, January 29, 1941, lot 25, illustrated, as Tender Proposal)
M. Calo Galleries (acquired at the above sale)
Madison Art Gallery, New York (1947, as Tender Proposal)
Mr. Supremo Perretti
Dona Teresa de Toledo, São Paolo, Brazil
Sale: Christie's, New York, February 15, 1995, lot 39, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1897, no. 229

Literature

Catalogue des ouvrages exposés au palais des Champ Elysées le 1er  mai 1896, Paris, 1896, p. 22, no. 229
Cosmopolitan, 1897, p. 8
Marius Vachon, W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1900, p. 159
Braun, Clement & Cie., Paris, photograph no. 4528
Mark Steven Walker, "William-Adolphe Bouguereau, A Summary Catalogue of the Paintings," William-Adolphe Bouguereau, L'Art Pompier, exh. cat., Borghi & Co., New York, 1992, p. 74
Damien Bartoli with Frederick Ross, William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work, New York, 2010, p. 314, no. 1897/01, illustrated

Condition

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is lined, but the cracking is slightly raised. The paint layer is quite dusty. There are a couple of scratches in the lower center that need to be attended to. This is a large painting with a robust paint layer, but there is no damage or restoration of any note and the condition is clearly very good. A light cleaning and varnish would beautifully present the work.
"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."

Catalogue Note

In 1846, Michael Knoedler arrived in the United States from France to open the New York branch of Goupil & Cie., one of the most powerful and influential galleries of the period (its provenance found in numerous works in this catalogue). In 1857, Knoedler bought out Goupil’s interests, establishing his own gallery, which quickly became known among the era’s American industrialists. By the late 1880s, Andrew Carnegie, J. J. Vandergrift, Charles Lockhart, and Henry Clay Frick had all developed remarkable art collections, with a significant number of paintings acquired through Knoedler.  While Knoedler sold works by the Barbizon and French naturalists, Bouguereau was among his most popular and profitable artists (DeCourcy E. McIntosh, “Demand and Supply: The Pittsburgh Art Trade and M. Knoedler & Co.,” Collecting in the Gilded Age, Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1880-1910, Pittsburgh, 1997, pp. 112-4).  Given the impressive size and romantic subject of Blessures d’amour, it is unsurprising that soon after its exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1897, it was sold by Knoedler to Ferdinand William Roebling (1842-1917) of Trenton, New Jersey.  By the late nineteenth century, Roebling had been named Secretary-Treasurer of The Roebling’s Sons Co., founded by his father John Augustus Roebling.  Together with his brothers Washington and Charles, Ferdinand grew the industrial company into the world’s leading producer of wire rope, earning the city’s motto “Trenton Makes, the World Takes.” The Roebling’s Sons’ product was a critical element in the construction of several of the world’s largest suspension bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as inspiring innovations in telegraphs, telephones, and electricity (the company’s history is preserved today by the Roebling Museum in Roebling, New Jersey, roeblingmuseum.org).  Ferdinand and his wife Margaret Allison Roebling purchased an impressive home at 222 West State Street in Trenton (now the headquarters of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities); they redecorated extensively in the 1870s making way for artworks like Blessures d’amour.

Beginning in the 1880s, Bouguereau increasingly found inspiration in Greco-Roman mythology.  His major compositions from this period envisioned a realm of peace and harmony populated with legendary heroes, gods and demigods. While the artist explored a new, somewhat fantastical subject matter in the 1890s, his compositions — such as the elegantly developed figure group of a statuesque "Venus" with two flying putti in Blessures d'amour — still revealed decades of devotion and religious adherence to the principles of Academic painting. While the unalarmed maiden has detected an arrow left in her side by a fleeing cherub, his companion hovers in the air, looking down at love’s wound. This figure's nakedness is discreetly covered by a curling wisp of white cloth, a modest choice that was not Bouguereau’s own — as evidenced by a studio photograph taken soon after the work’s completion and by the unabashed display of other cupids’ bodies in his oeuvre.  When sold by Mrs. Roebling in 1941 this alteration had already been made, perhaps at their request, and reversing the procedure to return the work to the artist’s original conception would be easily achieved today.