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Throughout the history of western art, intelligent artists have studied the work of their predecessors, absorbed the lessons and then added their own twist to an ever expanding pool of knowledge. Each generation learned from the previous while new frontiers were constantly being traversed.
For example, better colorists than Rembrandt followed him due to breakthroughs in paint manufacturing. These presented the opportunity for artists to paint out of doors enabling them to see naturalistic color effects for the first time while using a far wider range of available and affordable colors. This in no way negates the impact of Rembrandt's work. It just goes to show that by it's nature art is always evolving.
That is until approximately one hundred years ago when modernists decided to negate and disregard all that came before, literally throwing out the baby with the bath water.
This is why certain late 19th century painters, particularly Bouguereau, have achieved, in the minds of many, a rarified place in the pantheon of artistic adeptness. Those who deride Bouguereau site the saccharine nature of his pictures. To each his own in that regard, but there is no disputing his virtuosic handling of the human form and his innovative problem solving. Unlike many old masters, Bouguereau rarely ever painted a "bad" painting. The vast majority of his paintings are at a highly consistent masterpiece level.
Another stunning example of the culmination of all that preceded him, is William McGregor Paxton. He was the first artist to successfully marry academic form with impressionist color. Paxton, at his best, clearly outshines Vermeer, an artist who was a big influence on his own work. Paxton's great draftsmanship puts him in a class by himself in comparison to Vermeer, whom he was clearly indebted to.
And so it went until the twentieth century art establishment decided to ignore, downplay and invalidate all the came before. Bouguereau and Paxton were buried historically by artists, dealers and historians who realized they had no chance of equalizing, let alone surpassing, them. So they took the easy way out and chose to invalidate, rather than attempt to emulate.
Invalidating that which is superior is a technique by which lesser artists are able to look themselves in the mirror each morning. Self delusion is a far more comfortable posture than self evaluation, any day.
Interestingly Monet and Degas, two of the greatest heroes of the twentieth century art establishment, were asked who in retrospect would be considered the greatest artist of the nineteenth century. Their choice: William Adolph Bouguereau.
We artists today need to return to the past, revisit, pay homage to and learn from our artistic predecessors. Without trying to repeat what they did, we can learn from their excellent examples, use their training methods and techniques and hope one day we can carve out a niche for ourselves and possibly even inspire our descendants to soar to even greater heights.
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