Jeune prêtresse

By 1902 Bouguereau was in his late seventies and had been a reigning star of the Paris Salon for decades. Younger painters treated his polished, seamless surfaces as the thing to rebel against, yet buyers still wanted them, and American collectors most of all. This young woman is an invention, no priestess of any real temple, a draped figure with a staff on a mosaic floor, the kind of timeless classical subject Bouguereau could compose in his sleep. He gives her the flawless skin and quiet poise that were his signature, the join between one brushstroke and the next rubbed away until the paint reads like polished stone. Canvases like this crossed the Atlantic by the shipload in those years, which is how a French academic priestess came to spend her days in Rochester, New York.