“Poor Family”… Happiness is hidden in the heart of suffering

Sharjah: Aladdin Mahmood

Complete mastery of paintings and artwork was one of the main features of the style of the French painter William Adolphe Boguereau (1825-1905), an academic artist and one of the most important figures in the history of art. Historical and religious, embodied in portraits and images of small farmers.

The artist was born to a merchant named Théodore Boguero, and his early talent emerged from his childhood, which prompted him to attend a local painting and drawing school in Bordeaux. Chief among the awards and accolades were the Prize of Rome and the Legion of Honor, but it wasn’t until the end of his career that his spark began to fade completely. In the twentieth century, his works were accused of emptiness and artificiality, leading to neglect and oblivion, but these works were reconsidered in the seventies of the twentieth century, and today he is considered one of the main international artists, and his works are still highly criticized.

The painting “Poor Family” is one of Bouguereau’s most famous works, painted in oil colors in 1865. It belongs to his education system and his style of winning happiness in life. It is an artist’s direction. Temperament and old and conservative traditions, discovering and devising methods of manipulation unknown at the time, thereby he works to find places of joy and happiness within scenes full of pain and suffering, this is a special approach of the artist to life that many disagree with, based on the description of the most miserable and dark reality.

A family of four appears in the painting, the main character in the work, wearing a scarf and jilbab, holding a newborn baby, daughter on the left, son on the right, looking at the audience with a neutral gaze. Although their clothes are simple and worn, their place is unusually clean and beautiful, the paintings deal with the theme of poverty and misery, marble pillars appear in the background, because there is nothing to indicate the poverty of this family, no dirty place, no sad and tearful eyes.

The colors used by the artist are bright, bright, glowing, pink, blue, red, etc., with varying degrees of illumination, which do not reflect the true reality of this family. Revival.

As the painter tried to reflect the beauty, luster and bright details of the family in the artwork, he wanted to make the act of interpretation towards the family look happy unlike its reality. The right person. In art we only see beauty and to me art is beautiful. Why do we portray something ugly in nature? I don’t know what the need is. The person who correctly draws what he sees is not the prize winner. Talent creates everything and every reason. Nowadays writers, novelists and painters have gone too far and do not know where they will stop.

The basic philosophy from which Boguero developed is that the artist always seeks perfection and obtains them in order to complete the missing details, therefore, the true painter does not express reality as it is, but interprets it and expresses his imagination. Falsifying and falsifying reality, many of them noted that Bouguereau could teach his students how to draw through these works.

Although this philosophical view of art has seen many criticisms, especially regarding this painting, the works of the artist, who is considered one of the most influential painters in the history of art, later gained great recognition. Art began to shine with Bouguereau, and faded after his death.