Sir Adolph William Bouguereau A French painter, born in La
Rochelle in 1825, Bouguereau studied at the Ecole des Beaux-
Arts, and was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1850. His
favourite subjects were scenes from mythology and allegorical
religious and genre themes, which he rendered in the glossy,
pseudo-classic style that was favoured by the academic painters
of his time. With the advent of Impressionism at the end of the
19th century, his stylised, sentimental paintings were rejected
by the public and critics alike, though his style, with an
extreme eclecticism and slick, almost photographic realism is
highly respected. Bouguereau was one of the key supporters of
the Salon, the first official art exhibition held in France and
limited to members of the Royal Academy. The term Salon derived
from the Salon d'Apollon, in the Louvre, where the annual
exhibitions were first held. Until the 19th century the limited
number of artists who were allowed to show at these salon
exhibitions had a monopoly on publicity a