Overcoming All Obstacles

The Women of the Academie Julian

October 2, 1999–January 2, 2000

Louise Breslau

Chez soi

1885
Oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France

William Bouguereau is familiar to Clark patrons for his Nymphs and Satyr, but many are not aware of his role in training women artists in late-nineteenth-century France. Bouguereau was one member of the stellar faculty of the Académie Julian, Paris, which from its beginnings in 1868 prepared young women to enter the all-important Salon and the art marketplace at a time when the official school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, did not admit them. Overcoming All Obstacles explored the impact of the Académie Julian on the careers of such artists as Cecilia Beaux, Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, and Käthe Kollwitz.

Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian was organized by the Dahesh Museum, New York, and was made possible in part by grants from the Florence Gould Foundation, Air Ukraine, and the assistance of the Consulate General of Ukraine, New York.