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The Birth of Venus

William-Adolphe Bouguereau · Realism & Academic

Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905)
Date: 1879
Dimensions: 300 x 218 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

Bouguereau's Birth of Venus shows the goddess of love standing on a scallop shell drawn across the sea by dolphins, surrounded by a joyful crowd of sea nymphs, tritons and flying cupids celebrating her arrival.

A closer look

Venus stands at the centre in an elegant, twisting pose, raising her arms to lift her long auburn hair, her body painted with porcelain smoothness and flawless anatomy. Around her, the figures form a swirling circle: centaurs of the sea blow conch shells, nymphs embrace, cupids tumble through the sky. Every surface is polished to perfection, with no visible brushstrokes, as academic taste required. The painting was a great success at the Salon of 1879, even as the Impressionists were challenging everything it stood for.

History of the painting

The French state bought the painting at the Salon of 1879, and it hung in the Musée du Luxembourg, the national museum of living artists. When academic painting fell out of fashion it was sent in 1920 to the museum in Nantes, far from Paris; it returned with the revival of interest in 19th-century art and has been one of the best-known works in the Musée d’Orsay since the museum opened in 1986.

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