The Knitting Girl 1869

William Bouguereau painted 'The Knitting Girl' with oils on canvas, sometime in the late 19th century. It depicts a young woman paused in her labour; but it also seems concerned with broader issues of the social order. Bouguereau was a product of the French academic system, and pictures like this were calculated to appeal to the conservative tastes of the Parisian Salon. Bouguereau's paintings usually depict idealized peasants whose healthy appearance reflects a kind of moral purity. But this idealization is itself revealing. The image reflects the social anxieties of late 19th-century France, in which the old rural ways of life were disrupted by industrialization. Bouguereau's art can be seen as a conservative attempt to deny these social changes. To understand an image like this, we can consult the art criticism of the period, studies of the academic system, and social histories of rural life in France. Only then can we begin to understand the image's meaning for the time in which it was made.