The Heart's Awakening

By 1892 the kind of art that had made William-Adolphe Bouguereau rich and famous was already being called dead by younger painters. Impressionism had broken the academy's monopoly a generation earlier, and to Degas and his circle Bouguereau's smooth, porcelain finish was the very thing to rebel against. None of that dented his sales. He was still one of the most sought-after painters in Europe, prized above all by American collectors, and he went on making the mythological idylls they wanted, polished to a glassy smoothness. This one carries the French title L'Eveil du coeur, the awakening of the heart, and shows a seated young woman beside a small winged cupid, an allegory of first love. The theme was already centuries old when he painted it in 1892, and today the picture hangs in a private collection.