Carte Postale Sewing by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Sewing by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1898, is an oil on canvas painting of a barefoot little girl in a dress sewing on her porch steps. The polished, classical technique, realism and sentimental subject matter of the young seamstress are the traits that made Bouguereau one of the most famous painters of his time. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905) was a French painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Villa Medici in Rome. He exhibited with great success in the French Salon and became one of most renowned and wealthy artists of his era. Bouguereau worked in the French Academic tradition, a school of late 19th century modern painters who concentrated on the human figure and classical subjects in highly polished works of optical realism. His main interest was the female figure, usually rendered in quasi-classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of Modernism, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.