Detail of Fraternal Love by Bouguereau in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, January 2018

Fraternal Love

William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905)

1851

Medium/Technique: Oil on canvas

Dimensions 147 x 113.7 cm (57 7/8 x 44 3/4 in.)

Credit Line: Gift of the Estate of Thomas Wigglesworth

Accession Number: 08.186

Bouguereau enjoyed a lifetime of official favor and commercial success and carried the tradition of French academic painting to the turn of the twentieth century. As a young man, he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome, which enabled him to study in Italy for four years. Fraternal Love, painted in Rome, was modelled after the Renaissance artist Raphael's paintings of the Virgin and Child with Saint John, with their harmonious grouping of idealized, serene figures.

Inscriptions: Lower right: W. BOVGVEREAV. 1851.

Provenance: About 1855/1856, sold by the artist to Ernest Gambart (dealer; b. 1814 - d. 1902), London; 1856, sold by Gambart to Durand-Ruel, London; transferred to the private collection of Jean-Marie Fortuné Durand-Ruel (d. 1865), Paris; to his son, Paul Durand-Ruel (b. 1831 - d. 1922), Paris; 1867, sold by Paul Durand-Ruel to Samuel Putnam Avery (b. 1822 - d. 1904), New York [see note 1]; April 9, 1868, Avery sale, Miner, New York, lot 75, to Rollins [see note 2]. By 1869, Thomas Wigglesworth (b. 1814 - d. 1907), Boston [see note 3]; 1908, gift of the estate of Thomas Wigglesworth to the MFA. (Accession Date: April 9, 1908)

NOTES:
[1] Early provenance is taken from Damien Bartoli and Frederick Ross, William Bouguereau: Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work (Woodbridge, 2010), vol. 1, p. 140; vol. 2, pp. 32-33, cat. no. 1854/10. [2] According to a letter from Madeleine Fidell Beaufort to the MFA (June 14, 1982). [3] He lent this painting to the "Forty-Fifth Exhibition" (Boston Atheneaum, 1869), cat. no. 258, as "Fraternal Affection" and the Boston Art Club, January 1873, cat. no. 86, as "Holy Family".


Text from: collections.mfa.org/objects/31336