Searching for Bouguereau

[Michael Georges]

You know, and it is wonderful that a group of artists were able to make the leap to impressionism and succeed at it. But just because Beaugereau did not hear that particular call in -his- art does not make his work unworthy of appreciation, and certainly does not warrant dismissal, IMO.

I for one see in his work, a focused lens of perspective that I think no painter in history had before him. It is expressed not only in his facility for creating incredible visual illusion that stops you dead in your tracks, but also in his ability to create freshness in allegory, fable, and the fantastic.

[Peter Dransfield]

Now as a portrait painter I look at Bouguereau with a self-interested eye seeing what I can learn as I do at many artists. I will not have him on my walls but I have no shame in seeing how he painted flesh just as I look at Klimt, Lucien Freud and others - for the rest we will have to agree to differ.