The Nymphaeum

In 1878 Paris threw a Universal Exposition to show the world it had recovered from war and revolution, and Bouguereau sent 13 canvases to it. This was one of them, and it won him a medal of honour. He was then the most celebrated painter in France, the man young artists were told to imitate, while a few streets away Monet and his friends were still being turned away from that same official approval. Here he gives you 13 nymphs around a woodland pool, water spirits from Greek myth, their skin polished to an almost photographic smoothness. Everything is finished and nothing is left rough. The picture now hangs far from Paris, in Stockton, California, at the Haggin Museum.