Cupid on the lookout

By 1890 William-Adolphe Bouguereau was 65 and about the most sought-after painter in France. Collectors on both sides of the Atlantic, Americans above all, paid top prices for his polished mythologies, which he finished with a surface so smooth the brushwork nearly vanishes. Here the little god of love, Cupid, crouches in ambush behind some leaves, drawing his bow, ready to loose an arrow at whoever wanders past. The French title says as much: love lying in wait. He painted it while a younger generation was pulling hard in the other direction. That same summer, in 1890, Vincent van Gogh died with almost nothing sold. Bouguereau's Cupid went into a private collection, and there it has stayed.