This grand "Queen of Angels" by the French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau is an idyll of ineffable elegance. First presented at the Exposition Universelle in 1900, it was later donated by the Bouguereau family to the Petit Palais Museum in Paris, where it is still on display.
The faces of the angels and the Virgin are inspired by the features of the painter's first and beloved wife, Mary-Nelly Monchablon, who died in 1877 at the age of just 41.
Bouguereau had a life marked by successes and, at the same time, by very painful bereavements; nonetheless, his art always expressed great serenity, comforted by the pursuit of sublime beauty. The beauty of what he left us is not the result of a mere exercise in style, characterized solely by impeccable technique and devoid of poetic inspiration. Bouguereau's realism is woven with ideals of profound purity, with a lyricism that is only seemingly anodyne but never impersonal, insipid, or cloying, as many critics of the past have unjustly claimed.
As art historian Kara Lysandra Ross writes: "Bouguereau's fame was equal to that of Victor Hugo, his contemporary, and as an artist, he was as celebrated as Picasso is today. His death in 1905 was mourned throughout France and the entire world."
