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CHARITY
BY WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU

CHARITY
BY WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU (1825-1905)
IN THE BIRMINGHAM MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY

This distinguished painter gained an international reputation and was very popular with the general public, although his works have been condemned by a certain school of critics on the ground that he was too severely academic. The present painting is one of his best known works, and entirely characteristic of his methods and aims in art. Other well-known canvases of this nature are - "The Consoler," "A Girl Defending Herself from Love," "Prayers," "The Invocation," and "Covetousness."

Bouguereau did not confine himself, however, to what may be termed morality pictures, but succeeded equally in other fields. After his training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he studied in Rome, and used his experience in Italy with good effect on his return by decorating mansions in the classic style on the lines of the frescoes at Pompeii and Herculaneum. He became a regular exhibitor at the Salon, and his picture, "The Martyr's Triumph," now in the Luxembourg, which shows the body of St. Cecilia being borne to the catacombs, was exhibited at the great exhibition of 1855. Afterwards the State commissioned him to paint the Emperor's visit to the sufferers from the inundations at Tarascon.

He thus expressed his views on art and the position of the artist:

"The artist is born. Technique may be acquired by incessant work, but the instinct for art is a quality of the soul.... One must love it with his whole being. When the artist gives all that he is, all that he feels, when he translates with sincerity his deepest emotions, he can, even with an inferior technique, produce something beautiful, for in art there is something more than technique - soul-sentiment."

From the book "Famous Paintings" Volume 2 printed in 1913.

Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
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Online "Name the Painting"

"The Prayer"
painting by Bouguereau

Famous Paintings in this Series

James Archer My Great Grandmother	Bashkirtseff The Meeting	Bouguereau Charity	John Brett From the Dorsetshire Cliffs
Arnesby Brown The River Bank	Joseph Clark Mother's Darling	John Constable The Hay-Wain	Jean Baptiste Camille Corot The Fisherman's Hut
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot A Flood	Leonardo Da Vinci Monna Lisa	Edouard Detaille The Dream	Henri Fantin-Latour Flowers
Thomas Gainsborough Queen Charlotte	Thomas Gainsborough The Market Cart	Jean Baptiste Greuze The Head of a Girl	Jean Baptiste Greuze Fidelity
James Clark Hook Home With the Tide	Alfred William Hunt Windsor Castle	Josef Israels The Shipwrecked Mariner	B.W. Leader The Stream in Summer-time
Madame Vigee Le Brun Portrait of the Artist	Alphonse Legros A Canal With a Fisherman	Anton Mauve Watering Horses	J.L.E. Meissonier The Cavalier
Sir J.E. Millais Speak! Speak!	Sir J.E. Mallais My First Sermon	George Morland The Reckoning	George Morland The Inside of a Stable
Murillo The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin	Alfred Parsons When Nature Painted All Things Gay	Ralph Peacock The Sisters	Rembrandt Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild
Guido Reni "Ecce Homo"	Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mrs. Richard Hoare With Her Infant Son	Briton Riviere The Temptation in the Wilderness	Dante Gabriel Rossetti Day Dreams
John Singer Sargent Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth	Lady Stanley (Dorothy Tennant) His First Offence	Jan Steen Grace Before Meat	Marcus Stone On the Road from Waterloo to Paris
Constant Troyon Watering Cattle	H.S. Tuke "All Hands to the Pumps"	Velazquez King Philip IV. of Spain	S.E. Waller Sweethearts and Wives
Thomas Webster The Smile	Index Famous Paintings Volume 1 Art Gallery	Index Famous Paintings Volume 2 Art Gallery	Index Art Appreciation Lessons