Bouguereau Notes

Where to find in the book…

Virgil’s Assessment:

Bouguereau changed the way he worked sometime around 1867-1870, and the work he did from that point until around 1900 has the characteristics most often associated with him today, His use of high chroma was limited to accents in well-orchestrated color ensembles involving more middle and lower chroma than high chroma.

The method included several stages in the development of the picture, but it was only the last two that created the colors and optical effects that he is known for. The second-to-last stage, called the ebauche, essentially established the large blocks of color without fully modeling the forms. This stage was carried out mostly opaquely, and was allowed to dry before the next stage could begin. some parts of the ebauche were painted higher in chroma than the desired final effect, anticipating the optical effects they would produce when painted over with thinner paint in the final stage.

The final stage was called the fini, and involved developing the forms as fully as desired, using mostly opaque mixtures applied in varying degrees of thickness/thinness, and attending to the details. No actual glazing was employed, but scumbling was used where appropriate.

Re: Smooth Surface: 

A contemporary of Bouguereau’s mentioned B using a palette knife or painting knife very skillfully to smooth out certain passages. This can be done while the paint is wet, and the texture of dried paint can be scraped smooth with the knife also, to prepare it for the next layer or for whatever other reason. 

BOUGEAUREAU TECHNIQUES

Bouguereau shifted his approach from time to time. Some paintings were inked onto a mid-gray toned canvas, then a drying varnish was applied. Other times, he would opaque out the lighter figures or elements while applying this darks. And there is some work he did by underpainting in the major colors.
He worked on lead white grounds, and used driers to speed the construction. Unfortunately, some paintings are in poor condition as a result, having splinter or spidery cracks.
I think the genius of his work was the way he applied the last stage of painting, or the ‘Fini’. He rendered skin tones wet-into-wet to achieve the quality we see.

What you might mean by Bouguereau’s grisailles would be the frottis stage, described in my book. What he appears to have used was raw umber in the unfinished examples that I have seen. If you are considering using raw umber for this purpose yourself, adding a small amount of white lead to it will improve its long-term prospects.
Note that there were several layers added over the frottis in Bouguereau’s method, and by the end, the frottis was completely covered in most instances that I have seen in his finished paintings.

if Bouguereau ever worked with a grey underpainting, it would have been early in his career and/or when he was a student. In his mature period, he used a different method, which I described in my book. There were several stages of development in that method.
Bouguereau exercised great finesse with his brushes, and did his blending wet-into-wet in the stages in which he modeled the forms, using the brushes he applied the paint with rather than blenders, so far as I can tell or as anyone said who knew him. He did use a palette knife to smooth down brushstrokes and scrape out high spots where they would need it. I encourage you to read about it in my book.

What he did in the way of semitransparent touches was limited to the final refining stage in the execution of his paintings, over higher-chroma passages of the ebauche stage, at least in his painting of flesh in light-complected women and girls.

The method is alluded to in Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst’s 1896 book, “The Painter in Oil,” though he doesn’t mention Bouguereau specifically. Parkhurst had studied with Bouguereau in Paris. DBP’s book was out of print for decades, and expensive when used copies of it appeared on book searches. I had one, however, and suggested to Dover Publications that they issue reprints of it, which they did. It’s now available as an inexpensive paperback. Highly recommended.

Having examined many of Bouguereau’s paintings up close, I can tell you that there are brush strokes and knife work visible, and that includes painterly touches in the settings and clothing, but these are not usually noticeable in reduced-scale reproductions because the paintings are large with the figures painted life size. The strokes look more like what they’re intended to represent than they look like brush strokes or knife touches when seen from a few feet away. Up close, you can see that his work is more painterly than is apparent in reproductions.
An account of his practice written by a contemporary after a visit to WB’s studio noted that he brought a palette knife into play after he had done his day’s work with his brushes, smoothing out the passages he felt needed it.

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https://www.artrenewal.org/Article/Title/bouguereau-at-work

On Glazing: 

By those terms’ definitions, it is inaccurate and misleading to say that Bouguereau used glazes.

One, Walker’s use of the word “glazes” is not consistent with the original meaning of the term, which original meaning differentiates glazing from scumbling; Walker uses “glazes” for both, drawing no distinction between the essentially opposite optical effects created by glazing and scumbling respectively, which is a very important distinction. Two, he hadn’t noticed the visible evidence that shows the final layer of flesh in WB’s mature technique when painting light-complected females and children to have been greys or lower-chroma colors applied over somewhat higher-chroma opaque colors in the ebauche in varying degrees of opacity depending on the amount of light in the area in question. This is described in my book.
I was supplied all the same materials as Mark Steven Walker had, many years ago when Fred Ross and Damien Bartoli engaged me to write a description of Bouguereau’s methods for the Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonne after Walker died. Damien was the biographer of Bouguereau, and was friends with WB’s descendants, who gave us access to everything they had on him. Fred ended up not using my article in the Catalogue Raisonne because it was too long, but he said he might use it in a future expanded edition. Mark Walker was a good researcher, but only a student-level painter, so his eye was not educated enough to see in the paintings themselves the indications of the techniques that were used in the final two stages of their execution. I’m the first one who noticed those indications, or at least the first one to commit them to print. Initially Graydon Parrish had disagreed with me on one point, but we went together to a museum where there was a Bouguereau for us to examine last year, and after I pointed out those indications to him, he agreed that I was correct.
Since this Traditional Oil Painting group is based on my book of the same name, and since my purpose is to clarify rather than confuse, I want us to use the terms as I defined them in that book when we post comments here. By those terms’ definitions, it is inaccurate and misleading to say that Bouguereau used glazes.