Sotheby’s will present a dedicated sale of works realized and inspired by William Bouguereau alongside Contemporary artists working in the Realist figurative tradition. Bouguereau and His Circle: Then and Now, celebrates the leading 19th-century academic painter, including several fresh-to-market masterpieces as well as oil sketches and drawings realized to prepare some of his most important commissions.

These works will be offered alongside paintings by Bouguereau’s students, chief among them his wife, Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, who during her 58-year career in Paris participated in thirty Salons with thirty-six works and who in 1872 became the only American woman to ever receive a medal at the Salon. The sale will also showcase the work of contemporary figure painters working in the realist tradition today, including George Condo, Zachari Logan, Katsu Nakajima, Han-Wu Shen, Kadir Nelson, Odd Nerdrum, Tina Garrett, and Markus Schinwald.