fig. 1
Provenance
The artist’s studio
The descendants of the artist
Private Collection, Paris
Catalogue note
Bouguereau’s monumental painting, La Charité (fig. 1, Private Collection) was one of his submissions to the Exhibition Universelle in 1878, winning him a medal of Honor. Preparations for the painting had begun in 1877 and included numerous pencil drawings for the composition of the central figure of Charity surrounded by five small children. Our painting is Bouguereau’s final oil study for the completed work; a smaller, less finished sketch is in a French private collection. In this stage of Bouguereau’s rigorous process of turning his drawings and oil sketches into a final painting, there is usually very little change in the composition; rather his goal is to map out his color choices and determine how the three-dimensionality of the figures will translate on a much larger scale when transformed into the finished product. To highlight Bouguereau’s work ethic and desire for perfection, much is revealed in a letter his mother wrote to his daughter in July 1877: “I’m sending you a letter from La Rochelle – your father has told me to tell you that if he does not write you it is not for not wanting to, but because he is working with a model; he loves you very much and thinks of you, but hasn’t a moment to himself- he is working on a painting of Charity.” (Louise d’Argencourt, William Bouguereau, exh. cat, Paris, 1984, p. 206).
La Charite was installed in the first room of the 1878 Exhibition Universelle and is one of Bouguereau’s most exquisite paintings. Painted at the peak of his career and critical acclaim, its large-scale, verging on monumentality, combined elements of his best sacred subject matter (his figure of Charity clearly derived from his representations of the Blessed Virgin), together with an assemblage of five young children, nothing short of cherubim.
Following its inclusion in the 1878 Exhibition Universelle, La Charité was immediately sold to the New York collector, Joseph Drexel; an appropriate acquisition by a man who was known for his extreme philanthropy and charitable works.