The Day

Le Jour, or Day, completed in 1884, is the last of four canvases in which Bouguereau personified the times of day as single female figures, following Dawn, Dusk and Night from the early 1880s. Day is an idealised young woman rendered with the seamless, polished finish that made Bouguereau the reigning star of the Paris Salon. By 1884 that world was under pressure. The Impressionists had been mounting their own independent shows for a decade, and younger critics were turning against the academic manner. Bouguereau's public did not follow them. Collectors, many of them American, paid handsomely for exactly this kind of idealised figure, and works like Day sold about as fast as he could finish them.