Young Girl Defending Against Eros by Bouguereau Postcard

Young Girl Defending Against Eros by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1880, is an oil painting on canvas of a young woman playfully resisting the charms of the winged Cupid, set in a pleasant forest landscape. The tiny god of love and desire from classical mythology holds his famous arrow in one hand and attempts to break the grip of his intended target with the other. Bouguereau’s classical, academic technique crafts an image that is remains charming and memorable. 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.