Virgin with Angels

In 1881 the Paris Salon was still the center of the art world, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau was one of its reigning stars, even as a younger group of Impressionists held its own rival shows across town. This was his Salon picture that year: the Virgin seated in a wood with the Christ child asleep in her arms, and three angels leaning in to play their viols so softly as not to wake him. Bouguereau built such figures from careful studies, and his first wife is said to have modeled for the angels. The painting later crossed the Atlantic, and after passing through American collections it came to rest in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, where it hangs today in a cemetery's own museum.