La sorella maggiore

Bouguereau painted this in 1869, at a time when the rough new Realism and the first Impressionists were starting to needle the Paris art world. He went the other way, and audiences loved him for it. A girl sits on a rock with her baby brother asleep across her lap, both flawless, calm and softly lit against a mild rural background. The models were his own children, Henriette and Paul, which lends the tenderness a real source. Bouguereau smooths away every blemish, every awkward fold, giving the peasant scene the polish of a classical marble. That perfection is exactly what later critics held against him and what the public adored. The painting crossed the Atlantic and now belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.