Lot 13
  • 13

William Bouguereau

Estimate
800,000 - 1,200,000 USD
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Description

  • William-Adolphe Bouguereau
  • Le sommeil
  • signed W-BOUGUEREAU and dated 1864 (upper left) 
  • oil on canvas
  • 60 1/2 by 47 in.
  • 153.7 by 119.4 cm

Provenance

Durand-Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist)
Collection of M. Paturle
John Levy Galleries, New York (and sold, American Art Association, April 27, 1933, lot 17, illustrated)
Nicholas Acquavella, New York
Private Collection, United States
John Mulcahy, Ashford Castle, Cong, Ireland
Hammer Galleries, New York
Borghi Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above, 1984

Exhibited

Paris, Salon, 1864, no. 218
Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1867, no. 74
New York, John Levy Gallery, Back to Bouguereau, December 1932
New York, Borghi Gallery, Exposition Bouguereau, 1984

Literature

Ludovic Baschet, ed., Artistes Modernes: Catalogue Illustrée des oeuvres de W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1885, p. 27
Charles Vendryès, Dictionnaire illustré des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1885, p. 27
Marius Vachon, W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1900, p. 147
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. 66
Damien Bartoli with Fred Ross, William Bouguereau, Catalogue Raisonné of His Painted work, New York, 2010, p. 78, no. 1864/03, illustrated p. 78; and in the revised 2014 edition, p. 78, no. 1864/03, illustrated p. 78
Damien Bartoli and Frederick Ross, William Bouguereau, his life and works, New York, 2010, p. 152 illustrated p. 160, pl. 62; and in the revised 2014 edition, p. 152 illustrated p. 160, pl. 62

Condition

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work has been restored, and it is recommended that it be hung in its current condition. The lining has been applied with a non-wax adhesive, and it is nicely stabilizing the paint layer. The paint layer is clean, varnished and retouched. Some of the retouches are slightly weak, but overall the picture looks very well. This is a comparatively early work by the artist, and his paint layers from this period are considerably more robust and complex. There are no signs of abrasion to the paint layer. The retouches are clearly visible under ultraviolet light, and it seems they have been added mainly to address some cracking and small isolated losses. There are retouches around the edges, particularly the right edge. There are some restored cracks and losses in the lower left, a few spots in the blue skirt of the mother, and a few cracks in the baby. The boy on the right shows some slight weakness in his hair and beneath his chin. His left leg has received quite a lot of retouching to small paint losses, and there is another group of losses in his left forearm. The mother has a loss in her chin and in the index finger held up to her lip. None of these retouches are an indication of any real weakness to the character of the work. The painting is in very good state.
"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

After receiving the esteemed Prix de Rome in 1850, Bouguereau spent four years in Italy studying the works of Giotto and Raphaël. The plasticity in the modeling that Bouguereau achieves in Le sommeil certainly recalls, and rivals, the surfaces and articulations of the saints of the great masters of the high Renaissance. That the artist's mother and child paintings were greatly instructed by the fifteenth-century Italian paintings of the Madonna and Child did not escape critics or historians, as Marius Vachon notes that "from the outset, the paintings of the Italian masters revealed to the artist the beauty inherent in youth, the seduction in a smile, the grace in simplicity. Above all, he paints young mothers with their children. This theme, which had been interpreted in an inexhaustible variety of ways, and always with new eloquence, inspired him to paint works of an infinite charm, in the figure types were generally borrowed from the Italians" (as translated from Vachon, p. 90).

Although these three figures seem to radiate light, at Bouguereau's hand the sacred subject is secularized. He creates a dream-like universe of peace and serenity that is exquisite and transcendent in its beauty. While there are no overt religious references in either painting, the image of the mother and children can be interpreted as a secular portrayal of the Holy Family, in this instance dressed as Italian peasants. Critics of the time recognized the influence of earlier religious works on this secularized subject. Gauthier declared, “There is a great deal of charm in this maternal grouping, which could easily become a Sainte Famille,” and in his annual article on the 1864 Salon, Paul de Saint-Victor described the painting as, “a Roman peasant holds a naked child between her knees. She places a finger on her lips and signals to the little boy, who carries cherries in the fold of his raised shirt, without waking his sleeping little brother. These three white figures, composed and grouped like a working-class Holy Family, are modeled on a very clear format, with a remarkable sureness of handling” (as translated from the French, Baschet, p. 28). Indeed, Bouguereau’s Sainte Famille of 1863 (see lot 10 for a related sketch) which brought him success and was acquired for the Emperor's Imperial Collection and hung in the Palais des Tuileries, clearly gave inspiration to La Sommeil (it is worth noting that his other Salon submission of 1863, Les remords d'Oreste, was perceived as unsaleable at the time).

Bouguereau submitted Le sommeil to the Salon of 1864 alongside his Baigneuse (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent) and their exhibition represented his departure from the "Grand Genre" of history painting and a pivot towards more anecdotal and pastoral scenes. By rendering these paintings on a grand scale, he granted familiar subjects a heroic dimension that was previously reserved for historical or mythological subjects, and the formula brought him extraordinary success for which he remains celebrated to this day. Interestingly, the réduction of this painting (sold in these rooms, May 9, 2013, lot 15) presents the figure group in a dimly lit interior, while in the primary version, the present work, the family is situated in a sunny courtyard, under a grapevine, with a figure descending a staircase in the distance. 

Bouguereau was a consummate painter and draftsman and he honed a reputation for unparalleled excellence in his workmanship. In discussing the artist’s process, an American columnist noted that "nothing does he but paint from dawn until eve, winter and summer. Painting is his society, theatre, vacation. His canvases are his domestic pets. In becoming a master — in preparing to create a whole world of Bouguereau unreality — this gentle woodman starved in Paris in the approved art-student style" (Stuart Oliver Henry, Hours with Famous Parisians, Chicago, 1897, p. 213). The idiosyncratic "world of Bouguereau unreality" had a spectacular allure, particularly for American collectors, and the artist's dealer at the time, the legendary Durand-Ruel, had been cultivating that interest and guiding his output. Robert Isaacson writes that "Durand-Ruel introduced Bouguereau to one of his painters, Hugues Merle (see lot 11), who was having an enormous success with compositions of the mother and baby, brother and sister sort... Bouguereau was urged to try his hand at this genre, and his success with it is part of history" (Robert Isaacson, "Collecting Bouguereau in England an America," William Bouguereau: 1825 – 1905, exh. cat., Paris, 1984, p. 104).