Realist & Academic Paintings of the Nineteenth Century
The painters who stayed with the figure while Impressionism broke around them: Sargent, Bouguereau, Millet, Whistler and Homer.
9 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
Salon and studio
Through the second half of the nineteenth century the Paris Salon still set the standard, and the painters who mastered its polished finish were the most famous of their day. William-Adolphe Bouguereau sold every canvas he painted; John Singer Sargent made his name there with Madame X in 1884, a portrait so notorious he left Paris. Millet and the Realists painted peasants without sentiment; Whistler and Homer, both Americans, took the realist eye toward tone and toward the sea.
The works in this collection
Sargent's Madame X, El Jaleo and Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose; Bouguereau's The Birth of Venus, Nymphs and Satyr, The Wave and Dante and Virgil; Millet's The Gleaners; Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black (Whistler's Mother); Homer's The Gulf Stream.
Choosing one
Madame X is tall and black and belongs in a hallway or a dressing room; El Jaleo and The Gleaners are wide and suit a dining room. Bouguereau's mythologies are large and decorative and want a living-room wall.