The Cherry Branch by Bouguereau Postcard

The Cherry Branch by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1881, is an oil painting on canvas of two little French girls in a sunny outdoor landscape, holding aloft a cut branch of a cherry tree against a clear blue sky. Posed in a warm hug, the little girls are oblivious to the troubles of life. Bouguereau’s classical academic painting technique creates a quaintly realistic and pleasant portrait of childhood play and innocence. 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 classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of modern art, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.