The Shepherdess

By 1889, when Bouguereau painted this young shepherdess, the Paris art world had largely moved on from him. The Impressionists were the talk of the city and the polished academic finish he stood for was going out of fashion, yet he kept painting rural girls with this exact smooth, careful surface, and buyers abroad kept wanting them. She stands barefoot in a field with a stick balanced across her shoulders and a couple of oxen grazing behind her, looking straight out at you. An American collector, Laura Clubb, eventually bought it, and she gave it to the Philbrook in Tulsa in 1947, where it has become one of the museum's best-known pictures.