The Nymphaeum

According to a writer for the Chicago Evening Post in the 1920s, Bouguereau’s reputation in America was built upon his paintings of nudes. When Bouguereau’s 1884 painting The Bathers (Chicago Art Institute) came up for bid at a sale of 1886, it received applause and was promptly bought for a New York saloon for eighteen thousand dollars. Critics may have quibbled over whether his nudes were erotic or chaste, but clearly the public adored them.

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