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| "I produce a lot because I work all day long, without any breaks. It is the only way in fact of achieving good work."¹ – William Bouguereau |
Considering the size, complexity, and fine finish of William Bouguereau's paintings, it is rather astounding how prolific he was at his easel. In a career that spanned over sixty years, Bouguereau created more than 850 paintings, replicas, and reductions, as well as thousands of croquis, drawings, watercolors, and painted sketches. For anyone to have been so productive, he or she would have needed to be much more than talented – they would have had to have been extremely dedicated to their work.
Bouguereau's work day, by his own description in the article "M. Bouguereau chez lui" (L'Éclair, May 9, 1891) typically adhered to the following course :
"Every morning I get up at seven without fail and have breakfast, then I go up to my studio which I don't leave all day. Around three o'clock, a light meal is brought in; I don't have to leave my work. I rarely have visitors, since I hate to be disturbed. My friends, though, are always welcome. They don't bother me, I can work even when it's noisy or while they're chatting. When I'm painting, I don't pay attention to anything else."²
Bouguereau painted every day without fail, conversing [simultaneously] with the friends or of family members who were present. Rising at dawn he would breakfast and then go up to his studio after donning some old clothes reserved for the purpose – a flannel shirt and an old suit, usually a skull cap or aged felt hat, and slippers on his feet. He would deal with serious business as he busied himself at the easel. At noon the painter would eat a frugal meal sent up to him from the pantry on a dumb waiter. Usually this consisted of fried eggs, cheese, and bread, which he would gulp down hastily, wishing to lose as little time as possible. Then he would take up his brush and only lay it down reluctantly when the daylight became insufficient. But that did not mean that his labors were ended. After the evening meal, by lamplight, he would work on new compositions, imaging different arrangements, and trying out new configurations. He drew his his famous little sketches in pen and ink or in pencil, laying out on paper a whole fairy world that was conceived with the contentment of a very full day . . .³
At six in the morning, rain or shine, drizzle or wind, escorted by his three dogs and a servant, he sets out for a two-hour walk through the fields or along the seashore. Once home, he has a cup of tea and settles down to work. At eleven, the family gathers for lunch; at one, he resumes work with his model and continues until six in the evening, with a few short breaks. Then the painter picks up his rustic cane and his soft-felt hat and leaves, a cigarette between his lips, like any ordinary bourgeois, for a walk around the harbor, to watch the sun set on the sea.When the town clocks chime seven, he goes back home for dinner; and at ten, it is curfew time.⁴
Even at the age 80, shortly before his death, Bouguereau kept to his strenuous plan, working in the studio ten hours every day.⁵ Such a work ethic as Bouguereau possessed was not something he developed late in his career, of course, but a discipline he adopted very early in life. His dedicated working habits were so extraordinary that even among his hard-working peers at the Villa Medici – where the young painter had earned the right to study after winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1850 – Bouguereau stood out. It was there in Italy that he earned the sobriquet "Sisyphus," after the unfortunate figure whom Zeus condemned to the infinite toil of continually pushing a boulder up a hill, just to have it roll back down, inches short of the crest, when his strength failed. This was a joke made at Bouguereau's expense by his friends who thought his hard work would lead him nowhere, and the name followed Bouguereau for years after leaving Rome. By half-a-century later, however, the architect Charles Garnier, who had studied alongside Bouguereau in Rome and was likely the person who first called him "Sisyphus," had completely changed his mind: "Today Sisyphus has reached the mountaintop, and has planted his rock so firmly that he need not fear it will roll down again!"⁶
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| When he was in Paris in his home on the rue Notre Dame des Champs, or at La Rochelle in the old mansion of the eighteenth century which he occupied, all his time was spent in his studio, in the absorbing joy of creation. He was able to say as said Poussin, that painting to him was delectation. "When the labor of the day ceases for lack of day," he declared to a friend, "I long for the arrival of to-morrow."⁷ |
¹ "M. Bouguereau chez lui," L'Éclair, May 9, 1891, as appeared in Mark Steven Walker's "Bouguereau at Work," in the catalogue to William Bouguereau 1825 - 1905, (The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the City of Paris, and the Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford, Connecticut, 1984), p. 75.
² ibid., p. 79.
³ Bartoli, Damien with Frederick Ross, William Bouguereau: His Life and Works, (Antique Collectors' Club, New York, 2010), p. 448.
⁴ Vachon, Marius, W. Bouguereau, (A. Lahure, Paris, 1900), p. 99, as appeared in Walker, p. 80.
⁵ Sonolet, Louis, "Bouguereau,"Masters in Art (Bates and Guild Company, Boston, 1906), p. 28.
⁶ Vachon, p. 24. ⁷ Sonolet, p. 28.