Gabrielle Cot
Gabrielle Cot (French pronunciation: [ɡabʁijɛl kɔt]) is a portrait oil on canvas painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau from 1890. Gabrielle Cot was the daughter of the French painter Pierre Auguste Cot, the most notable pupil of Bouguereau. This painting was the only non-commissioned painting he ever painted.
Initially the work was started as a study for another painting but Bouguereau was enthralled by her charm and beauty, so he decided to paint a portrait of her.
The painting measures 45.7 by 38.1 centimetres (18.0 by 15.0 in) and bears the artist's signature, W-BOUGUEREAU, and the date of 1890 in the lower left corner.
The painting was gifted to Madame Duret by Bouguereau on the occasion of Gabrielle's marriage. Gabrielle married an architect named Zilin in 1890. The painting was exhibited at the Cercle de L'union Artistique in Paris during 1891. It remained in Duret's family passing down via inheritance until it was sold in New York on 25 May 1983. It was held in a private collection until being sold again in New York on 10 November 1998; it was exhibited a year later in 1999 at the Newington Cropsey Foundation.
Source and Courtesy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Cot
The art historian Richard Muther wrote in 1894 that Bouguereau was a man "destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste [who] reveals... in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention." In 1926, American art historian Frank Jewett Mather criticized the commercial intent of Bouguereau's work, writing that the artist "multiplied vague, pink effigies of nymphs, occasionally draped them, when they became saints and madonnas, painted on the great scale that dominates an exhibition, and has had his reward. I am convinced that the nude of Bouguereau was prearranged to meet the ideals of a New York stockbroker of the black walnut generation." Bouguereau confessed in 1891 that the direction of his mature work was largely a response to the marketplace: "What do you expect, you have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes. That's why, with time, I changed my way of painting."
