William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)
La frileuse, 1879
Oil on canvas
22 x 18 inches (55.9 x 45.7 cm)
Signed and dated upper left: W. Bouguereau 1879


PROVENANCE:
Newhouse Galleries, New York;
Private collection, Fort Worth, Texas, acquired from the above.

In a discussion of the present painting Fred Ross considers that "it was painted at the pinnacle of the artist's career. It is only because the hands are somewhat undersized that I feel his wife and one of his most accomplished disciples, Elizabeth Gardener Bouguereau, may have 'helped' somewhat as she did on occasion when he had a particularly heavy work load which he surely did in 1879: a year he incredibly turned out, including this work, 23 fully catalogued paintings including two of his most famous masterpieces, Les Bohemiennes and his huge multi-figured La Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus) now on permanent exhibit at Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The model for this painting is clearly the same model he used for La Tricoteuse painted the same year; catalogued in the William Bouguereau: Catalog Raisonné of his Painted Works as 1879.09. The proper name for this painting may be La Frileuse (The chilly girl) which he used on a similar work a few years earlier, catalogue number 1872.07."

We are grateful to Fred Ross for confirming the authenticity of this work from firsthand inspection; it will be included in the third edition of the catalogue raisonné on the artist currently in preparation.






Alternate Artist Spellings: "Adolphe William Bouguereau", "Bouguereau, Adolphe William", "Bouguereau, Adolphe-William", "Bouguereau, William Adolphe", "Bouguereau, William-Adolphe", "William-Adolphe Bouguereau"

Glue-lined canvas; very fine, faint craquelure; under UV light, there appears to be a 1 x 1 inch reverse L-shaped spot of inpainting in figure's ear; inpainting in figure's left thumb and small dot in left wrist; a small spot of inpaint at lower right edge; two thin horizontal approx. 1 inch lines in figure's right shoulder; possible touches of older inpaint to figure's face, however, a discolored varnish layer makes painting difficult to read.