/lit/ - Literature

>>10723128
Bouguereau's humans always look like models (prostitutes) placed on top of the background. His figures aren't the characters they are supposed to represent, they always look like some woman dressed up as that character. He never captures the true spirit of the character, he just depicts the model posing for him.

Take The Wave for example. I mean just look at her, she's in a stiff awkward pose, and her personality is not that of some carefree lady on the beach, or some dea goddess, she's just a woman modelling for Bouguereau. And she doesn't even seem that happy to be doing it.

Look at the sands around the hands too, have you ever seen sand form such a hard right angle? He has clearly painted the table he had the model sitting on, and tried to add the add the sand to it after the fact. But because the model had her hands on the edge of the table, he had to add that little sand shelf so the figure's hands could match the model's hands resting at the edge of the table.

And look at the wave itself. Really it looks like a painted backdrop, not a real wave at the ocean.

The overall impression you get of this painting, similar to many Bouguereaus is a model posing in front of a background. Not a mythological character in some scene, just a model that has been pasted onto a background, she doesn't belong in the world, she doesn't interact with it, she's just a girl posing for a painting with a background behind her.