The Bathers

1882

A house on rue Verdière in La Rochelle

From the early 1870s Bouguereau and his family spend every summer in La Rochelle; in 1882 he decides to buy a house, and farm buildings, rather than rent, and by August the family has a permanent summer base on rue Verdière: he begins several paintings here and completes them in his Paris studio.

1885

A lecture at the Institut de France: the beauty of the body

In a lecture at the Institut de France in 1885 Bouguereau says that the art of the past shows what an inexhaustible source of inspiration lies in a comparatively small number of elements — the head, bust, arms, torso, legs, belly — and asks why, then, one should look for other subjects for painting or sculpture.

1885–1905

Post: chairperson

1886

The Salon of 1886: the scandal of “The Return of Spring”

At the Salon of 1886 a great scandal is caused by “The Return of Spring”, a canvas on the awakening of love: the artist is accused of “immorality”. He takes such attacks hard, is proud of the picture and in a letter to his son-in-law insists that the pose and expression of the young woman are, as he thinks, entirely correct.

1886

A memorial exhibition for his friend Paul Baudry

Thanks to Bouguereau’s efforts a memorial exhibition of the work of his friend Paul Baudry, with whom he once went to Rome, is held in 1886; he will later dedicate several images of nude women against a rolling wave to Baudry’s memory.