William Adolphe Bouguereau: The Pieta

William Adolphe Bouguereau (La Rochelle 1825-1905), Pietà, signed and dated ‘W. BOUGUEREAU 1876’ (lower center), oil on canvas, 90½ x 58¾ in. (222.9 x 149.2 cm.), Image Source: Christie’s

“The immediate inspiration for Pietà came not from Bouguereau’s devout Christianity, but from the painful loss of his eldest son Georges who died on July 19, 1875 at the age of sixteen. After spending several months overwhelmed by grief, Bouguereau sought to lift his spirits by fully immersing himself in his art. For several weeks, he considered compositions that would permit him the fullest expression of his feelings while simultaneously commemorating his son’s life and passing. His sketchbooks from this period show a flurry of excited and even angry passages, with dozens of drawings that illustrate his slow and deliberate plan to paint his version of a Pietà. After what must have been an uninterrupted period of compulsive work, Bouguereau appears to have completed this magnum opus in only two months (M. Vachon, ‘Avant le Salon’, La France, March 20, 1876)…Bouguereau’s Pietà displays at once grandeur, beauty and a noble restraint from the maudlin emotionalism seen in many works by lesser hands. A tribute to passionate parental love overwhelmed by despair, Pietà nevertheless retains its gravity and dignity thereby occupying a singular place in art history.
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