Painted during the same year as his 1879 Salon triumphs, the work distills Bouguereau’s interest in childhood to its purest form: a single sitter removed from narrative setting and presented in quiet psychological engagement with the viewer.
Provenance
Goupil & cie, Paris, November 6, 1879, no. 13889 (acquired directly from the artist)
Goupil & cie, The Hague, December 8, 1879, no. 13889 (acquired from the above)
Cornelis (Cor) Marinus Van Gogh, Amsterdam, December 31,
1879 (acquired from the above)
Sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, April 25, 1968, lot 245 as Young Girl
with Wildflowers
Hammer Galleries, New York, inv. no. 20627-007 (acquired at the above sale)
Private Collection, New Jersey, late 1960s (acquired from the above)
Thence by descent
Literature
Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau: Catalogue Raisonné of His Painted Work, Vol. I, 2010, p. 194, no. 1879/15 (illustrated).
William Bouguereau, 1825–1905, exhibition catalogue, Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1984, fig. 95, illustrated p. 132.
Catalogue note
Painted in 1879, La petite fille aux fleurs belongs to a pivotal moment in Bouguereau’s career, when his technical mastery, international reputation, and thematic vision converged with exceptional clarity. By the end of the 1870s Bouguereau had become the preeminent representative of French academic painting, celebrated for his command of classical draftsmanship, radiant surface finish, and extraordinary ability to infuse idealized figures with emotional resonance. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under François-Édouard Picot and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1850, he maintained throughout his career a devotion to Renaissance and Neoclassical principles while adapting them to modern subjects drawn from contemporary life.
The year 1879 marks a high point in Bouguereau’s public visibility and artistic ambition. At the Paris Salon he submitted two major works whose contrast reveals the breadth of his artistic language. The first, Naissance de Vénus (now Musée d’Orsay), is a monumental expression of mythological classicism: Venus rises from the sea attended by reveling figures in a composition of grand theatricality and flawless technical polish. Its immediate acquisition by the French state confirmed Bouguereau’s standing as the leading academic painter of his generation.
Exhibited alongside it was the genre painting Jeunes Bohémiennes, depicting a young peasant girl protectively holding a child. The juxtaposition was deliberate. Where Naissance de Vénus reaffirmed Bouguereau’s authority within the lineage of classical history painting, Jeunes Bohémiennes demonstrated the evolving direction of his subject matter toward scenes of rural childhood. These two paintings together encapsulate the dual ambitions of Bouguereau’s mature art: classical grandeur on the one hand, and a deeply human exploration of contemporary innocence on the other.
La petite fille aux fleurs belongs directly to this second artistic current. Painted during the same year as the Salon triumphs, the work distills Bouguereau’s interest in childhood to its purest form: a single sitter removed from narrative setting and presented in quiet psychological engagement with the viewer.
The creation of this painting coincided with a significant personal chapter in Bouguereau’s life — his engagement to Elizabeth Jane Gardner, an American painter who had studied under him at the Académie Julian and who would later become his wife. Their relationship was commemorated in 1879 by a matched pair of portraits: a self-portrait by Bouguereau and a portrait of Gardner. These paintings reveal a more introspective aspect of his work, emphasizing emotional nuance rather than grand gesture. The tenderness and restraint that characterize these portraits parallel the sensitivity found in his child subjects of the same period, including La petite fille aux fleurs.
By the late 1870s Bouguereau had developed his most enduring and recognizable subject: the idealized peasant child. Drawing upon models from Paris and rural communities near La Rochelle, he transformed ordinary children into symbols of innocence and moral purity. Scholars have often noted how Bouguereau fused strict academic discipline with the immediacy of direct observation, producing figures that feel both sculpturally idealized and psychologically present. In his hands, childhood becomes not anecdotal but emblematic — a timeless image of virtue expressed through classical aesthetics.
La petite fille aux fleurs exemplifies this synthesis. The sitter is presented half-length against a neutral background, her gaze directed outward. Her hands gently clasp a bouquet of freshly gathered wildflowers — a motif Bouguereau frequently used to signify youth, transience, and purity. The composition’s simplicity intensifies the emotional exchange between viewer and subject. With no narrative setting, the focus remains entirely on the child’s expression and presence.
Technically, the painting displays Bouguereau’s hallmark softly graduated handling of flesh tones, achieved through extensive preparatory studies followed by thin color glazes that create seamless tonal transitions. The surface is velvety and nearly brushless, allowing light to pass gently over the face and flowers. The bouquet, rendered with botanical specificity, anchors the image in observed reality.
Bouguereau insisted on working directly from life, requiring prolonged sittings from his youthful models. These sessions fostered familiarity and ease, allowing natural expressions to emerge rather than posed sentiment. His process began with detailed drawings to establish anatomical clarity, followed by small oil sketches and then careful transfer to canvas with tonal refinement through layered glazes.
The young sitter in La petite fille aux fleurs was one of Bouguereau’s favored models and appears repeatedly in paintings produced between 1879 and 1883. Her distinctive oval face, wide contemplative eyes, and fair complexion make her easily identifiable across the group. Her expression shifts among works — sometimes introspective, sometimes serene — yet her essential presence remains constant.