Il ritorno della primavera

By 1886 the young painters of Paris were breaking the human figure into loose colour, and Bouguereau was doing the exact opposite, polishing skin to porcelain and hanging his nudes on the old mythological framework the Salon still rewarded. This is spring returning, a woman ringed by cupids as the world warms. What is stranger is what the painting provoked later. Now in Omaha, it was attacked twice by visitors who found the nude figure indecent, once in 1890 and again in 1976, when a man threw a small bronze at it. The damage each time was slight. Look at the little winged figure clinging at her back, and you can see the kind of playful sensuality that so offended them.