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75-528: Upon formation in 1928, the San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society listed several objectives in its Articles of Incorporation: to develop educational facilities for the study of history, to collect documents and articles of historical interest, and to establish and maintain a museum where such items could be stored and displayed. Stockton native Robert McKee and his wife, Eila Haggin McKee, offered

150-430: A $ 2.5 million renovation of its galleries, which included permanent gallery space for displaying a large portion of the museum's extensive collection of the work of J. C. Leyendecker. The museum's three-story building now contains more than 34,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Pioneer Room, the principal history gallery during the museum's early years, displayed artifacts and archival material collected since 1868 by

225-732: A 15,500 square foot addition along the western edge of the existing structure. Principal funding came from the estates of Robert McKee and of rancher Jennie Hunter, and a significant gift from Irving Martin Sr., owner of the Stockton Record . The new exhibit areas, including the California Room, the Jennie Hunter Rooms, the West Gallery, and the lower level Arms Gallery and Vehicle Gallery, opened in 1949. In 1976,

300-551: A 19-year-old from Lisle-en-Rigault . Living together unmarried, the pair kept their liaison a secret. Their first child, Henriette, was born in April 1857; Georges was born in January 1859. A third child, Jeanne, was born 25 December 1861. The couple married quietly (as many assumed they were already married) on 24 May 1866. Eight days later, Jeanne died from tuberculosis . In mourning, the couple went to La Rochelle, and Bouguereau made

375-803: A Kentuckian who had emigrated to California . Haggin and Tevis acquired the Rancho Del Paso land grant near Sacramento. The two invested in the mining business with George Hearst as one of their partners. Hearst, Haggin, Tevis and Co. became one of the largest mining companies in the United States; its operations included the Ontario silver mine in Park City, Utah , the Homestake Mine in South Dakota , and with Marcus Daly ,

450-401: A broad sampling of artists. Certain artists were collected in depth, however, including Jean Béraud , Albert Bierstadt, Rosa Bonheur , Jean-Léon Gérôme, Edward Lamson Henry , Barend Cornelis Koekkoek , Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven and Jehan Georges Vibert . Approximately one-third of the collection is composed of works by American artists and the remaining two-thirds by European painters. Of

525-459: A family of wine and olive oil merchants. The son of Théodore Bouguereau (born 1800) and Marie Bonnin (1804), known as Adeline, William was brought up a Catholic. He had an elder brother, Alfred, and a younger sister, Marie (known as Hanna), who died when she was seven. The family moved to Saint-Martin-de-Ré in 1832. Another sibling, Kitty, was born in 1834. At the age of twelve, Bouguereau went to Mortagne-sur-Gironde to stay with his uncle Eugène,

600-457: A horse breeding farm and concentrated his breeding efforts at his Elmendorf Farm in Lexington, Kentucky . Haggin had acquired Elmendorf in 1897 and until his death in 1914 worked to develop it into the largest horse breeding operation in the United States of its era. Haggin owned the colt Tyrant which in 1885 he sent to compete as a three-year-old on the U.S. East Coast where he won

675-458: A house, as well as local farm buildings. By August of that year, the family's permanent summer base was on the rue Verdière. The artist commenced several paintings here and completed them in his Paris studio. Bouguereau flourished after his Villa Medici residence. In 1854–55 he decorated a pavilion at the grand house of a cousin in Angoulins , including four large paintings of figures depicting

750-597: A jury in Albany, New York , of defaming the dealer in remarks made in a television interview. Sources on his full name are contradictory: it is sometimes given as William-Adolphe Bouguereau (composed name), William Adolphe Bouguereau (usual and civil-only names according to the French tradition), while in other occasions it appears as Adolphe William Bouguereau (with Adolphe as the usual name). However, he used to sign his works simply as William Bouguereau (hinting "William"

825-723: A law office in Sacramento. They moved to San Francisco in 1853. He built a large and impressive Nob Hill mansion on the east side of Taylor Street between Clay and Washington streets, which stood until the earthquake and fire of 1906. It was to decorate the walls of the 61 rooms of this mansion that Haggin began the core of the family art collection that would eventually be housed in the Haggin Museum (named for his son Louis Terah Haggin) in Stockton , California. Haggin and Tevis married sisters, daughters of Colonel Lewis Sanders,

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900-482: A major gift from William Knox Holt funded construction of a wing named for his father, the Benjamin Holt Wing, with a gallery showcasing Holt's contributions to the mechanization of agriculture, including a restored Holt 75 Caterpillar tractor. The Holt gift also funded construction of environmentally controlled storage facilities, offices, and the museum's library and archive. In 2017 the museum completed

975-565: A one-room schoolhouse and a Chinese herb shop. Also among the thousands of historical items permanently on display are a World War II jeep and the trunk used by murderess Emma LeDoux in the infamous "trunk murder of 1906." Eila Haggin McKee's grandfather, the Gold Rush tycoon James Ben Ali Haggin, collected art to decorate the walls of his 61-room Nob Hill mansion. However, it was her father, Louis Terah Haggin, and her mother, San Francisco socialite Blanche Butterworth Haggin, who assembled

1050-531: A painting of her in 1868. A fourth child, Adolphe (known as Paul), was born in October 1868. Aged 15, Georges' health suffered, and his mother took him away from the bad air of Paris. However, he died on 19 June 1875. Nelly had a fifth child in 1876, Maurice, but her health was declining and the doctors suspected that she had contracted tuberculosis. She died on 3 April 1877, and baby Maurice died two months later. The artist planned to marry Elizabeth Jane Gardner ,

1125-556: A painting, including detailed pencil studies and oil sketches, and his careful method resulted in a pleasing and accurate rendering of the human form. His painting of skin, hands, and feet was particularly admired. He also used some of the religious and erotic symbolism of the Old Masters, such as the "broken pitcher" which connoted lost innocence. Bouguereau received many commissions to decorate private houses and public buildings, and, early on, this added to his prestige and fame. As

1200-713: A priest, and developed a love of nature, religion, and literature. In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons. Here he learned to draw and paint from Louis Sage, who had studied under Ingres . Bouguereau then reluctantly left his studies to return to his family, now residing in Bordeaux . There he met a local artist, Charles Marionneau, and commenced at the Municipal School of Drawing and Painting in November 1841. Bouguereau also worked as

1275-594: A pupil whom he had known for ten years, but his mother was opposed to the idea. Soon after Nelly's death, she made Bouguereau swear he would not remarry within her lifetime. After his mother's death, and after a nineteen-year engagement, he and Gardner married in Paris in June 1896. His wife continued to work as his private secretary, and helped to organize the household staff. His son Paul contracted tuberculosis in early 1899; Paul, his stepmother, and Bouguereau went to Menton in

1350-427: A respect for tradition. To others, he was a competent technician stuck in the past. Degas and his associates used the term "Bouguereauté" in a derogatory manner to describe any artistic style reliant on "slick and artificial surfaces", also known as a licked finish . In an 1872 letter, Degas wrote that he strove to emulate Bouguereau's ordered and productive working style, although with Degas' famous trenchant wit, and

1425-633: A series of more than 1400 cartoons published weekly under the title "Do You Remember?" that dealt with local homes, businesses, buildings, organizations, special events, and everyday life. The museum has more than 1100 of these nostalgic glimpses into the city's past. Sanders, Patricia B. The Haggin Collection . Stockton, CA: The Haggin Museum, 1991. James Ben Ali Haggin James Ben Ali Haggin (December 9, 1822 – September 12, 1914)

1500-503: A shop assistant, hand-colouring lithographs and making small paintings that were reproduced using chromolithography . He was soon the best pupil in his class and decided to become an artist in Paris. To fund the move, he sold portraits – 33 oils in three months. All were unsigned and only one has been traced. In 1845, he returned to Mortagne to spend more time with his uncle. He arrived in Paris in March 1846, aged twenty. Bouguereau became

1575-468: A sitter while also retaining her likeness. Although Bouguereau spent most of his life in Paris, he returned to La Rochelle again and again throughout his professional life. He was revered in the town of his birth and undertook decorating commissions from local citizens. From the early 1870s, he and his family spent every summer in La Rochelle. In 1882, he decided that rather than rent he would purchase

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1650-534: A student at the École des Beaux-Arts . To supplement his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and studied historical costumes and archeology. He was admitted to the studio of François-Édouard Picot , where he studied painting in the academic style. Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850) was an early example of his neo-classical works. Academic painting placed the highest status on historical and mythological subjects and Bouguereau determined to win

1725-672: Is an almost uncanny peek into the past. Other exhibits focus on Native Americans, the Gold Rush , agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley , historic firefighting equipment, a recreated local flour mill, as well as shipbuilding and other Stockton industries. The displays known as the Storefronts are recreations of businesses and rooms typical of establishments in San Joaquin County between 1890 and 1915, including

1800-520: The Académie Julian where he gave lessons and advice to art students, male and female, from around the world. During several decades he taught drawing and painting to hundreds, if not thousands, of students. Many of them managed to establish artistic careers in their own countries, sometimes following his academic style, and in other cases, rebelling against it, like Henri Matisse . He married his most famous pupil, Elizabeth Jane Gardner , after

1875-641: The Prix de Rome , which would gain him a three-year residence at the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy, where, in addition taking formal lessons, he could study firsthand the Renaissance artists and their masterpieces, as well as Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities. The young artist entered the Prix de Rome contest in April 1848. Soon after work began there were riots in Paris , and Bouguereau enrolled in

1950-762: The Anaconda Copper Company in Montana . The James Ben Ali Haggin Papers, 1887-1914 , are kept at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Haggin purchased the Rancho Del Paso horse farm near Sacramento, California in 1859. He made it one of the country's most important horse breeding and Thoroughbred racing operations whose horses competed from coast-to-coast. In 1905, Haggin stopped using Rancho De Paso as

2025-523: The Legion of Honour on 12 July 1859. By this time, Bouguereau was turning away from history painting and lengthy commissions to work on more personal paintings, with realistic and rustic themes. By the late 1850s, he had made strong connections with art dealers, particularly Paul Durand-Ruel (later the champion of the Impressionists), who helped clients buy paintings from artists who exhibited at

2100-459: The Salons . Thanks to Durand-Ruel, Bouguereau met Hugues Merle , who later often was compared to Bouguereau. The Salons annually drew over 300,000 people, providing valuable exposure to exhibited artists. Bouguereau's fame extended to England by the 1860s. Three paintings were shown at the 1863 Salon and Holy Family (Now at Chimei Museum ) was sold to Napoleon III, who presented it to his wife

2175-539: The avant-garde . He also gained wide fame in Belgium , the Netherlands , Portugal , Spain , Italy, Romania and in the United States, and commanded high prices. His works often sold within days of completion. Some were viewed by international collectors and bought before work had even finished. Bouguereau's career was nearly a direct ascent with hardly a setback. To many, he epitomized taste and refinement, and

2250-466: The "convention of smoothed-out form and waxen surface". The New York Cultural Center staged a show of Bouguereau's work in 1974—partly as a curiosity, although curator Robert Isaacson had his eye on the long-term rehabilitation of Bouguereau's legacy and reputation. In 1984, the Borghi Gallery hosted a commercial show of 23 oil paintings and one drawing. In the same year, a major exhibition

2325-818: The Betty H. Schroebel Stockton Historic Center, houses materials that relate specifically to the city's past. The Agricultural & Industrial Archives were established in 1984 with a grant from the William Knox Holt Foundation. The history of Holt Manufacturing Company , the local industry that developed the side-hill combine harvester and the Caterpillar track-type tractor, is documented in photographs, drawings, business records, operators' manuals, and advertising. The Archives also include records and drawings of Stephens Bros. Boat Builders , designers of commercial and pleasure watercraft; material from

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2400-618: The Empress Eugénie, who hung it in her Tuileries apartment. Bather (1864), a shocking nude, was submitted to an exhibition in Ghent , Belgium. It was a spectacular success and purchased by the museum at great expense. At this time, William took on decorative work at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, which lasted four years. In 1875, with assistants, he began work on a La Rochelle chapel ceiling, producing six paintings on copper over

2475-586: The European art, French works are the most numerous. Initially, Mrs. McKee gave the San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society 180 paintings, most of them part of the $ 10 million estate she inherited following the death of her father in March 1929. Both Eila and her husband Robert arranged for additional paintings to be bequeathed to the museum upon their deaths. Today the Haggin Collection totals nearly 240 works, of which approximately 75 are on view in

2550-614: The Milwaukee Art Museum assembled more than 40 of Bouguereau's paintings for a major retrospective of his work, which according to The Wall Street Journal , asked the readers to "see Bouguereau through the eyes of an age when he was lionized, and Impressionism was dismissed as 'French freedom'". The exhibition later was scheduled to travel to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tenn., and then to

2625-676: The National Guard. After an unsuccessful attempt to win the prize, he entered again in 1849. Following 106 days of competition, he again failed to win. His third attempt commenced unsuccessfully in April 1850 with Dante and Virgil but five months later, he heard he had won a joint first prize for Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes . Along with other category winners, he set off for Rome in December and finally arrived at

2700-578: The San Diego Museum of Art. Prices for Bouguereau's works have climbed steadily since 1975, with major paintings selling at high prices: $ 1.5 million in 1998 for The Heart's Awakening , $ 2.6 million in 1999 for The Motherland and Charity at auction in May 2000 for $ 3.5 million. Bouguereau's works are in many public collections. Notre Dame des Anges ("Our Lady of the Angels")

2775-635: The San Joaquin Society of California Pioneers. The Victorian furnishings of the Jennie Hunter Rooms evoke life in the Central Valley during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The contents were bequeathed to the museum by Miss Jennie Hunter, a local rancher, alumna of Mills College , and Daughter of San Joaquin County Pioneers, with the proviso that they be displayed just as they had been arranged in her home. The result

2850-722: The Stockton Iron Works, which built dredges that helped construct the San Joaquin River Delta levees; the Tillie Lewis collection, which preserves the history of Stockton's preeminent "Tomato Queen" agri-businesswoman; and material from Sperry Flour Company. The Haggin's library also includes a large collection of work by Ralph O. Yardley , editorial cartoonist for the Stockton Record from 1922 to 1952. During this long tenure he produced

2925-711: The Villa Medici in January 1851. Bouguereau explored the city, making sketches and watercolours as he went. He also studied classical literature, which influenced his subject choice for the rest of his career. He walked to Naples and on to Capri, Amalfi and Pompeii . Still based in Rome and working hard on course work, there were more explorations of Italy in 1852. Although he had a strong admiration for all traditional art, he particularly revered Greek sculpture , Leonardo da Vinci , Raphael , Michelangelo , Titian , Rubens and Delacroix . In April 1854, he left Rome and returned to La Rochelle. Bouguereau, painting within

3000-634: The aesthetic tendencies of the Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant to be ironic. Paul Gauguin loathed him, rating him a round zero in Racontars de Rapin and later describing in Avant et après (Intimate Journals) the single occasion when Bouguereau made him smile on coming across a couple of his paintings in an Arles brothel, "where they belonged". Bouguereau's works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him

3075-461: The chair accompanied the painting also, wherever the painting was shown. However, even during his lifetime, there was critical dissent in assessing his work; the art historian Richard Muther wrote in 1894 that Bouguereau was a man "destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste [who] reveals... in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention". In 1926, American art historian Frank Jewett Mather criticized

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3150-427: The commercial intent of Bouguereau's work, writing that the artist "multiplied vague, pink effigies of nymphs, occasionally draped them, when they became saints and madonnas, painted on the great scale that dominates an exhibition, and has had his reward. I am convinced that the nude of Bouguereau was prearranged to meet the ideals of a New York stockbroker of the black walnut generation." Bouguereau confessed in 1891 that

3225-702: The core of the museum's art collection is derived from gifts from the Haggin and McKee families, it has been significantly augmented through gifts and purchases, including works by American and European artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that complement the original Haggin gifts. Notable is Rodin's The Athlete (c. 1901–1904). The museum has also assembled collections of Japanese woodblock prints, illuminated manuscripts , paintings by American illustrators such as J. C. Leyendecker and Maxfield Parrish , and both Western and Asian decorative arts . The Haggin Museum's Library/Archives began with material donated to

3300-537: The daughter of Ibrahim Ben Ali , a Turkish army officer. On December 28, 1846, Haggin married Eliza Jane Sanders of Natchez, Mississippi with whom he had five children. She died in 1893. On December 30, 1897, the seventy-five-year-old Haggin married twenty-eight-year-old Margaret Voorhies at her stepfather's residence in Versailles, Kentucky . Miss Voorhies was a niece of his first wife. Haggin died September 12, 1914, at his Newport, Rhode Island , residence and

3375-758: The death of his first wife. Bouguereau received many honors from the Academy: he became a Life Member in 1876; received the Grand Medal of Honour in 1885; was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1885; and was made Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour in 1905. He began to teach drawing at the Académie Julian in 1875, a co-ed art institution independent of the École des Beaux-Arts , with no entrance exams and nominal fees. In 1856, William began living with one of his models, Nelly Monchablon,

3450-506: The direction of his mature work was largely a response to the marketplace: "What do you expect, you have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes. That's why, with time, I changed my way of painting." Bouguereau fell into disrepute after 1920, due in part to changing tastes. Comparing his work to that of his Realist and Impressionist contemporaries, Kenneth Clark faulted Bouguereau's painting for " lubricity ", and characterized such Salon art as superficial, employing

3525-428: The end of his life he described his love of his art: "Each day I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the next morning to come ... if I cannot give myself to my dear painting I am miserable." In the spring of 1905, Bouguereau's house and studio in Paris were burgled. On 19 August 1905, aged 79, Bouguereau died in La Rochelle from heart disease. There

3600-400: The following year rented a fourth-floor studio at 3 rue Carnot, near his apartment. In 1866, the year of his marriage to Nelly, he bought a vast plot of land on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and an architect was commissioned to design a grand house with a top-floor studio. The family was installed in 1868, together with five servants and with his mother, Adeline, visiting daily. Bouguereau spent

3675-594: The group $ 30,000, with two stipulations: that the museum be named in honor of her late father, Louis Terah Haggin (the son of James Ben Ali Haggin ), and that it include galleries to house her parents' art collection. The Louis Terah Haggin Memorial Galleries and San Joaquin Pioneer Historical Museum opened its doors to the public on 14 June 1931, Flag Day. Upon her death in 1936, though she never visited in person, Eila Haggin McKee left

3750-537: The institution $ 500,000. Further, to honor her memory, Robert McKee donated funds for the building's first addition, which included storage space on the ground floor and a vestibule and large gallery on the second. When it opened in December 1939, the room now known as the McKee Gallery contained paintings, furniture, and decorative art from the couple's New York residence, and overlooked the rose garden. In 1948, Stockton architect Howard G. Bissel drew up plans for

3825-493: The latter part of the 19th century. It is characterized by Louis and Blanche's penchant for landscapes, genre, and animal paintings. They avoided religious or historical paintings. They eschewed the nude, Nymphaeum by William-Adolphe Bouguereau being a notable exception to this rule. And like their contemporaries, the Haggins assembled a collection that was encyclopedic and international in nature, featuring one or two works from

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3900-555: The majority of the Haggin Collection. Louis and Blanche both spoke fluent French and maintained a residence in Paris, where they entertained artists, writers, and European nobility. Their growing collection came to fill their homes in San Francisco, Paris, and New York City. Typical of art collections assembled after the Civil War by wealthy Americans, the Haggin Collection reflects the work of conservative Realism painters of

3975-655: The most important French artist of that time. For example, Nymphs and Satyr was purchased first by John Wolfe, then sold by his heiress Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to hotelier Edward Stokes, who displayed it in New York City's Hoffman House Hotel. Two paintings by Bouguereau in the Nob Hill mansion of Leland Stanford were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Gold Rush tycoon James Ben Ali Haggin and his family, who normally eschewed

4050-411: The museum in 1931 by the San Joaquin Society of California Pioneers, comprising a wide-ranging collection of historical artifacts, photographs, ledgers, journals, correspondence, and other ephemera . Today there are some 10,000 volumes in the library. Approximately two-thirds are history related, and one-third deal with art and art history. The latter make up the Earl Rowland Art Library, named in honor of

4125-432: The museum's art galleries at any one time. A catalog of the paintings, The Haggin Collection , compiled and written by Dr. Patricia Sanders, was published in 1991. A hall between the two European art galleries displays Haggin and McKee family memorabilia, including portraits, photographs, and personal items including one of Eila's evening gowns and the World War I American Red Cross uniform she wore in France. Although

4200-433: The museum's longest-serving director. The majority of the history volumes are part of the Almeda Mae Petzinger Library, named after the benefactor who bestowed a generous endowment to help maintain the library in perpetuity. There are more than 600 archival boxes and some 100 flat files filled with photographs, maps, business records, greeting cards, advertising, and other items in the library stack room. A separate facility,

4275-553: The next six years. Once installed in the city in summer 1875 he began Pietà , one of his greatest religious paintings and shown at the 1876 Salon, in tribute to his son Georges. At the behest of King William III of the Netherlands , Bouguereau went to Het Loo Palace in May 1876. The king admired the artist and they spent intimate times together. In May 1878 the Paris Universal Exhibition opened to showcase French work. Bouguereau found and borrowed twelve of his paintings from their owners, including his new work Nymphaeum . Bouguereau

4350-415: The nude, made an exception for Bouguereau's Nymphaeum . In 1890 Bouguereau’s painting Return of Spring was damaged at a Foreign art exhibition of local artists in Omaha Nebraska. Carey J. Warbington, an accountant, threw a chair at the painting. After Warbington was convicted of insanity and eventually committed suicide. The picture after the incident still traveled the United States with the tare intact and

4425-402: The prestigious Withers and Belmont Stakes , the latter becoming the third leg of the U.S. Triple Crown series. The following year his colt Ben Ali won the 1886 Kentucky Derby . At Rancho Del Paso Haggin bred Comanche and Africander , colts which won the 1893 and 1903 Belmont Stakes respectively. Haggin was the eldest of eight children of Terah Temple and Adeline (Ben Ali) Haggin,

4500-441: The rest of his life here and at La Rochelle. Bouguereau was an assiduous painter, often completing twenty or more easel paintings in a single year. Even during the twilight years of his life, he would rise at dawn to work on his paintings six days a week and would continue painting until nightfall. Throughout the course of his lifetime, he is known to have painted at least 822 paintings. Many of these paintings have been lost. Near

4575-408: The seasons. He was happy to undertake other commissions to pay off the debts accrued in Italy and to help his penniless mother. He decorated a mansion with nine large paintings of allegorical figures. In 1856, the Ministry of State for Fine Arts commissioned him to paint Emperor Napoleon III Visiting the Victims of the Tarascon Flood . There were decorations for the chapel at Saint-Clotilde. He received

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4650-470: The south. When the stay was prolonged, the artist found a room in which to paint. Paul died at his father's house in April 1900, aged 32; Bouguereau had outlived four of his five children, only Henriette outlived him. Elizabeth, who was with her husband to the end, died in Paris in January 1922. When Bouguereau arrived in Paris in March 1846, he resided at the Hotel Corneille at 5 rue Corneille. In 1855, after his stay in Rome, he lived at 27 rue de Fleurus, and

4725-474: The traditional academic style, exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Paris Salon for his entire working life. An early reviewer stated, "M. Bouguereau has a natural instinct and knowledge of contour. The eurythmie of the human body preoccupies him, and in recalling the happy results which, in this genre, the ancients and the artists of the sixteenth century arrived at, one can only congratulate M. Bouguereau in attempting to follow in their footsteps ... Raphael

4800-413: Was a French academic painter . In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he

4875-425: Was a staunch traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female form. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs , bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era. Bouguereau employed traditional methods of working up

4950-425: Was an American attorney , rancher , investor , art collector , and a major owner and breeder in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing . Haggin made a fortune in the aftermath of the California Gold Rush and was a multi-millionaire by 1880. Those who recounted James Ben Ali Haggin's appearance often noted his short stature and "slightly Oriental appearance handed down from his Turkish ancestors". Haggin

5025-412: Was an outpouring of grief in the town of his birth. After a Mass at the cathedral, his body was placed on a train to Paris for a second ceremony. Bouguereau was laid to rest with Nelly and his children at the family vault at Montparnasse Cemetery . In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community, and simultaneously he was reviled by

5100-408: Was born in Harrodsburg , Mercer County , Kentucky , a descendant of one of the state's pioneer families who had settled there in 1775 and a descendant of Ibrahim Ben Ali , who was an early American settler of Turkish origin. He graduated from Centre College at Danville, Kentucky , then entered the practice of law. In October 1850, he joined a Kentucky acquaintance, Lloyd Tevis , in opening

5175-529: Was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York . His grandson, James Ben Ali Haggin III , was a portrait painter and stage designer. His grandson, Richard Lounsbery , was a businessman and amateur painter who established the Richard Lounsbery Foundation . His descendants in Thoroughbred racing include Louis Lee Haggin II and William Haggin Perry . William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau ( French pronunciation: [wiljam adɔlf buɡ(ə)ʁo] ; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905)

5250-406: Was his given name, whatever the order), or more precisely as "W.Bouguereau.date" (French alphabet) and later as "W-BOVGVEREAV-date" (Latin alphabet). In The King in Yellow , by Robert W. Chambers , he is mentioned in various tales as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's novel The Sign of the Four (1890), the character Mr Sholto remarks, "there cannot be

5325-518: Was inspired by the ancients ... and no one accused him of not being original." Raphael was a favourite of Bouguereau and he took this review as a high compliment. He had fulfilled one of the requirements of the Prix de Rome by completing an old-master copy of Raphael's The Triumph of Galatea . In many of his works, he followed the same classical approach to composition, form, and subject matter. Bouguereau's graceful portraits of women were considered very charming, partly because he could beautify

5400-584: Was last shown publicly in the United States at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. It was donated in 2002 to the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior, an order of nuns affiliated with Clarence Kelly 's Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius V. In 2009, the nuns sold it for $ 450,000 to an art dealer, who was able to sell it for more than $ 2 million. Kelly was subsequently found guilty by

5475-702: Was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada. The exhibition opened at the Musée du Petit-Palais , in Paris, traveled to The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and concluded in Montréal. More recently, resurgence in the artist's popularity has been promoted by American collector Fred Ross, who owns a number of paintings by Bouguereau and features him on his website at Art Renewal Center . In 2019,

5550-572: Was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown . William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle , France, on 30 November 1825, into

5625-420: Was typical of such commissions, he would sometimes paint in his own style, and at other times conform to an existing group style. He also made reductions of his public paintings for sale to patrons, of which The Annunciation (1888) is an example. He was also a successful portrait painter and many of his paintings of wealthy patrons remain in private hands. From the 1860s, Bouguereau was closely associated with

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