Whisperings of Love by Bouguereau

Whisperings of Love by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1889, is an oil on canvas painting of lovely young woman in ancient classical Greek dress seated in a lush flower garden with winged Cupid whispering in her ear. Drawing on subjects from classical antiquity and the Renaissance, Bouguereau combines the old with modern academic realism to produce an image that is coy, sentimental, pleasant and memorable. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905) was a French painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Villa Medici in Rome. He exhibited with great success in the French Salon and became one of most renowned and wealthy artists of his era. Bouguereau worked in the French Academic tradition, a school of late 19th century modern painters who concentrated on the human figure and classical subjects in highly polished works of optical realism. His main interest was the female figure, usually rendered in classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of modern art, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.