Biblis (Byblis) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Biblis (Byblis) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, is an 1884 oil painting on canvas based on the story from ancient Greek mythology of the daughter of a river goddess who falls in love with her twin brother and dies in despair. As told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and other sources from classical antiquity, Byblis roamed the lands in endless grief over her impossible love, always crying in anguish. The nymph transformed into a spring or river as she died. Bouguereau paints the softly glowing goddess against a dark forest landscape, staring into the water emanating from her tears. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905) was a French painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Villa Medici in Rome. He exhibited with great success in the French Salon and became one of most renowned and wealthy artists of his era. Bouguereau worked in the French Academic tradition, a school of late 19th century modern painters who concentrated on the human figure and classical subjects in highly polished works of optical realism. His main interest was the female figure, usually rendered in classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of modern art, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.