The Bilbao museum acquires a painting by Bouguereau

13/12/23- Acquisition - Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes - A history painter first and foremost, William Bouguereau knew how to "complete a great mythological ceiling and make a whole Olympus stand up in the air - which is not as easy as it seems". But he also knew how to paint on earth simple Breton women kneeling in a church, and "to compose an interesting scene, to group two figures with emotion, and to put under the beauty of the face the beauty of the soul, like a light shining softly through alabaster". Théophile Gautier admired in these terms The Vow at Sainte-Anne d’Auray exhibited at the Salon of 1870, now disappeared.

1. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)
The Vow at Sainte-Anne d’Auray, c. 1870
Oil on canvas - 61 x 50 cm
Bilbao, Museum of Fine Arts
Photo: MBA Bilbao

See the image in its page

A reduction of this composition was purchased by the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, sold for 165,466 euros on 17 January 2023 at Ansorena in Madrid (ill. 1). Its purchase was made possible by a bequest from Begona Maria Azkue, which she had made to help the museum complete its collections. The museum’s nineteenth-century French collection has thus been enriched by the addition of a major figure in academic painting. This painting joins other very different visions of Brittany, such as those of Charles Cottet, Paul Gauguin and the Zubiaurre brothers.
Bouguereau stayed in the region several times between 1866 and 1868. One of his best-known paintings inspired by his travels, Breton Brother and Sister, now in the Metropolitan Museum, also offers an idealised vision of peasants leading simple, happy lives. This impression is reinforced by the choice to limit his composition to two figures. In the American painting, he depicts two children seated, staring at the viewer, while the young Breton women in Bilbao kneel in profile, holding a candle, in front of the shrine of Saint Anne, dressed in the costume and headdress of the country; in the…