Between 1878 and 1884, Bouguereau produced approximately 50 paintings, including 14 works over three meters high, which were exhibited at the Salon.  It was during this six-year period of unprecedented activity that Bouguereau started to paint La Jeunesse de Bacchus – though the first iteration of the composition appear in wall decorations 30 years before the final work was completed. When conceived, Bouguereau was enjoying international recognition and accolades, appointed to Knight of the Order of Leopold by the King of Belgium in 1880, elected president of the Paintings section at the Salon in 1881, teaching at the Académie Julian, and elected president of the Society of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and Engravers in 1883.

When La Jeunesse de Bacchus was first presented in 1884 at the Paris Salon, it was indisputably the most important and masterly example of French Academic painting anywhere in the world, and established Bouguereau as the most celebrated and successful French Academic painter of the 19th century. It’s size did not overwhelm audiences, but rather engaged visitors to come closer to the canvas, first to admire the artist’s technique, which gave the painting an impressive materiality, and next, because they identified so strongly with the life-size subjects within the massive work.  An immediate connection was made between the observer and those who were a part of Bouguereau’s fictional world. The man carrying Bacchus, for example, stands 5’7’’, the same height as that of the average man at the time. The figure of the fallen bacchante in the foreground of La Jeunesse de Bacchus is so close to the edge of the canvas that she seems to be exiting the space within the frame and entering the room of the spectator, collapsing the division between art and life.

Arranged as a frieze, with 11 life-sized female and male figures parading across the composition, Bouguereau’s extraordinary skill of conveying gesture and movement is on full display. In the shadow on the left, two satyrs try to support Silenus, who teeters precariously atop a donkey. In the shadow on the right, two centaurs are dancing to the sound of a double flute.  Their animated movements provide a distant echo of what takes place in the center of the composition, where a group of dancers form a circle around the figure who carries the child Bacchus on his shoulders.

Classical subjects and Greek myths provided Bouguereau with inspiration throughout his career. The resulting narrative paintings were accessible to contemporary audiences and earned him great acclaim as his submissions to the Paris Salon, including compositions such as Nymphs et Satyre (1873, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown Massachusetts), Flore et Zéphyre (1875, Musée de Mulhouse, France), and his Salon submission of 1885, Biblis (1884, Salarjung Museum, Hyderabad, India). The classical subject also provided a veil under which Bouguereau could present the nude, a strategy that many 19th century Academic artists employed.

With major works held in international museum collections including Musée d'Orsay, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; and a new show currently on view the at the Milwaukee Art Museum (Bouguereau in America), the appearance of La Jeunesse de Bacchus at auction offers an unprecedented opportunity to acquire a masterpiece of 19th century European Art.