William Bouguereau

Acquired by the present owner from the Célina Brieu-Eymery family (descendants of the sitter)

Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau, catalogue raisonné of his painted work, New York, 2010, pp. 14-5, no. 1847/04, (detail) illustrated 

This painting has not been lined. There is a 2 x 2" patch applied to the upper left of the reverse, though whatever is being addressed is concealed by the roundel frame. The colors are bright and fresh, and the surface is very healthy, with barely visible craquellure in isolated areas to the left of her face, her forehead, and above her head. Under UV, multiple small spots of inpainting fluoresce throughout the composition.
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William Bouguereau painted the present work, dated February 1846, when he was just twenty years old, and living with his uncle Eugène, a priest in the small city of Charente-Maritime.  In order to raise funds for his impending move to Paris (he was enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts), Bouguereau used his uncle’s connections to secure early portrait commissions from local residents. Within three months Bouguereau had completed thirty-three portraits in at least seven townships including Saint-Dizant-du-Gua, where Jean Brieu and Therese-Rose Mariaud lived on the family vineyard with their daughter Marie Rose Appoline Celina Brieu (1823-1898), who, according to her descendants memory, is the sitter depicted in the present work. 

As told by the family, Célina and Bouguereau had known each other since they were children as their fathers worked together; Bouguereau’s father was a wine merchant in Bordeaux while Celina’s father was a wine producer in Saint-Dizant-du-Gua. Bouguereau and Celina probably met in Mortagne a few kilometers away from Terre Fume (the Brieu vineyard) when the young artist was staying with his uncle.  As years went by, Célina and Bouguereau grew closer and eventually were engaged to be married. Unfortunately as he was from a modest background Bouguereau could not marry Celina and, heartbreakingly, this portrait was said to have been ordered from him in honor of her engagement to Pierre Chery Eymery, formerly a postmaster. In Bouguereau’s diary from May 1848, less than a year after Celina’s wedding, he references an emotional break-up from which he still suffers.

The Portrait  of Marie-Célina Brieu is among Bouguereau’s first completed works. The drawing of the young woman’s hands, the detailed textures of her costume, as well as the fluidity of the light in the landscape reveal that, even at this early stage in his career, Bouguereau already possessed the skill that would make him the undisputed master of Academic painting in the late nineteenth century. 

Louise d’Argencourt confirms that the date inscribed at the lower left