A Young Girl Defending Herself against Eros

Bouguereau painted this around 1880, at the height of a career the coming century would work hard to forget. He was the most decorated academic painter in France, selling flawless nudes and allegories to wealthy buyers while, across the same city, the Impressionists were being laughed out of the salons he presided over. The subject is a light one: a young woman fending off a small winged Cupid, the god Eros, whose arrow she pushes away with a half-smile, love resisted for the moment. Every surface is polished until the brushwork disappears, which is exactly the finish the younger painters were rebelling against. The oil crossed the Atlantic to an American owner and now hangs at the Getty in Los Angeles.