Sotheby's to offer the largest work of William Bouguereau's career

Sotheby’s announced that the most important work of French Academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s celebrated career, La Jeunesse de Bacchus, will highlight its Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on 14 May. Equally impressive in both scale and technical artistry, the monumental canvas stands an astounding 20 feet in length and 11 feet in height. The work has hung in Bouguereau’s studio in Paris since it was completed in 1884 – the culmination of two years of work – and has previously left only three times in its 135-year history: when initially presented at the Salon in 1884, followed by exhibitions in London and Antwerp through 1885, for the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1889, and as part of a retrospective touring the Musée du Petit-Palais in Paris, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford in 1984-85. On offer this spring by the direct descendants of the artist, L