From Salon to Saloon

The art market thrives on revivals, and in recent years has seen everything from 17th century mannerists to Britain's Pre-Raphaelites brought back into vogue. But one group--the 19th century French Salon painters, including such luminaries as Cabanel, Meissonier, Bonnat, Baudry and Rochegrosse--has seemed beyond redemption. Until last week when, that is, half in jest, Paris' avant-garde Galerie Breteau dragged out 20 paintings by one of the most ac claimed academicians and popular artists of his time, a man whose very name was an epithet to the impressionists: William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

It is not hard to see why the 19th century trail breakers despised Bouguereau (Cezanne cried, "J'emmerde Bouguereau!"; Matisse fled his studio in anger). Though his brush stroke was immaculate, his subject matter tended toward soaring echelons of well-stuffed nymphs in the buff, ruddy satyrs in postures of half prayer, half lust. When religiosity overcame him, he produced limpid-eyed madonnas and tableaux of martyrs (preferably female) borne by Roman-nosed pallbearers (preferably male). In the heyday of the Second Empire, no one admitted being titillated by his tangles of tushies and concupiscent cupids; the critics professed to see only the pursuit of Raphael's ideal of beauty.

For Bouguereau, such faultless yet lifeless art brought honors, fame and money. At 25, he won the coveted Grand Prix de Rome, and his idyllic ceilings painted for rich Paris patrons won him membership in the Institut de France. To the end, when he was producing such works as his Les Oreades, Bouguereau found big buyers, many of them Americans. In 1900, a buyer in New York was willing to pay $7,400 for a work incredibly called Innocence. Historians credit his work as a major influence on Western saloon art.

For some, Bouguereau never went out of fashion. Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum still hangs one; Collector Huntington Hartford continues to admire him. Recently, one of his small, sentimental scenes of mother and child brought $3,500 at a Manhattan auction.

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