See J.E. Montucla, Histoire des mathématiques (1802).
BOUGUEREAU, ADOLPHE WILLIAM (1825-1905), French painter, was born at La Rochelle on the 30th of November 1825. From 1843 till 1850 he went through the course of training at the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1850 divided the Grand Prix de Rome scholarship with Baudry, the subject set being “Zenobia on the banks of the Araxes.” On his return from Rome in 1855 he was employed in decorating several aristocratic residences, deriving inspiration from the frescoes which he had seen at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and which had already suggested his “Idyll” (1853). He also began in 1847 to exhibit regularly at the Salon. “The Martyr’s Triumph,” the body of St Cecilia borne to the catacombs, was placed in the Luxembourg after being exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855; and in the same year he exhibited “Fraternal Love,” a “Portrait” and a “Study.” The state subsequently commissioned him to paint the emperor’s visit to the sufferers by the inundations at Tarascon. In 1857 Bouguereau received a first prize medal. Nine of his panels executed in wax-painting for the mansion of M. Bartholomy were much discussed—“Love,” “Friendship,” “Fortune,” “Spring,” “Summer,” “Dancing,” “Arion on a Sea-horse,” a “Bacchante” and the “Four Divisions of the Day.” He also exhibited at the Salon “The Return of Tobit” (now in the Dijon gallery). While in antique subjects he showed much grace of design, in his “Napoleon,” a work of evident labour, he betrayed a lack of ease in the treatment of modern costume. Bouguereau subsequently exhibited “Love Wounded” (1859), “The Day of the Dead” (at Bordeaux), “The First Discord” (1861, in the Club at Limoges), “The Return from the Fields” (a picture in which Théophile Gautier recognized “a pure feeling for the antique”), “A Fawn and Bacchante” and “Peace”; in 1863 a “Holy Family,” “Remorse,” “A Bacchante teasing a Goat” (in the Bordeaux gallery); in 1864 “A Bather” (at Ghent), and “Sleep”; in 1865 “An Indigent Family,” and a portrait of Mme Bartholomy; in 1866 “A First Cause,” and “Covetousness,” with “Philomela and Procne”; and some decorative work for M. Montlun at La Rochelle, for M. Emile Péreire in Paris, and for the churches of St Clotilde and St Augustin; and in 1866 the large painting of “Apollo and the Muses on Olympus,” in the Great Theatre at Bordeaux. Among other works by this artist may be mentioned “Between Love and Riches” (1869), “A Girl Bathing” (1870), “In Harvest Time” (1872), “Nymphs and Satyrs” (1873), “Charity” and “Homer and his Guide” (1874), “Virgin and Child,” “Jesus and John the Baptist,” “Return of Spring” (which was purchased by an American collector, and was destroyed by a fanatic who objected to the nudity), a “Pietà” (1876), “A Girl defending herself from Love” (1880), “Night” (1883), “The Youth of Bacchus” (1884), “Biblis” (1885), “Love Disarmed” (1886), “Love Victorious” (1887), “The Holy Women at the Sepulchre” and “The Little Beggar Girls” (1890), “Love in a Shower” and “First Jewels” (1891). To the Exhibition of 1900 were contributed some of Bouguereau’s best-known pictures. Most of his works, especially “The Triumph of Venus” (1856) and “Charity,” are popularly known through engravings. “Prayer,” “The Invocation” and “Sappho” have been engraved by M. Thirion, “The Golden Age” by M. Annetombe. Bouguereau’s pictures, highly appreciated by the general public, have been severely criticized by the partisans of a freer and fresher style of art, who have reproached him with being too content to revive the formulas and subjects of the antique. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867 Bouguereau took a third-class medal, in 1878 a medal of honour, and the same again in the Salon of 1885. He was chosen by the Society of French Artists to be their vice-president, a post he filled with much energy. He was made a member of the Legion of Honour in 1856, an officer of the Order 26th of July 1876, and commander 12th of July 1885. He succeeded Isidore Pils as member of the Institute, 8th of January 1876. He died on the 20th of August 1905.
See Ch. Vendryes, Catalogue illustré des œuvres de Bouguereau (Paris, 1885); Jules Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains (Paris, 1874); P.G. Hamerton, French Painters; Artistes modernes: dictionnaire illustré des beaux-arts (1885); “W. Bouguereau,” Portfolio (1875); Émile Bayard, “William Bouguereau,” Monde moderne (1897).
BOUHOURS, DOMINIQUE (1628-1702), French critic, was born in Paris in 1628. He entered the Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen, and was appointed to read lectures on literature in the college of Clermont at Paris, and on rhetoric at Tours. He afterwards became private tutor to the two sons of the duke of Longueville. He was sent to Dunkirk to the Romanist refugees from England, and in the midst of his missionary occupations published several books. In 1665 or 1666 he returned to Paris, and published in 1671 Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, a critical work on the French language, printed five times at Paris, twice at Grenoble, and afterwards at Lyons, Brussels, Amsterdam, Leiden, &c. The chief of his other works are La Manière de bien penser sur les ouvrages d’esprit (1687), Doutes sur la langue française (1674), Vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola (1679), Vie de Saint François Xavier (1682), and a translation of the New Testament into French (1697). His practice of publishing secular books and works of devotion alternately led to the mot, ”qu’il servait le monde et le ciel par semestre.” Bouhours died at Paris on the 27th of May 1702.
See Georges Doucieux, Un Jésuite homme de lettres au dix-septième siècle: Le père Bouhours (1886). For a list of Bouhours’ works see Backer and Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, i. pp. 1886 et seq.
BOUILHET, LOUIS HYACINTHE (1822-1869), French poet and dramatist, was born at Cany, Seine Inférieure, on the 27th of May 1822. He was a schoolfellow of Gustave Flaubert, to whom he dedicated his first work, Méloenis (1851), a narrative poem in five cantos, dealing with Roman manners under the emperor Commodus. His volume of poems entitled Fossiles attracted considerable attention, on account of the attempt therein to use science as a subject for poetry. These poems were included also in Festons et astragales (1859). As a dramatist he secured a success with his first play, Madame de Montarcy (1856), which ran for seventy-eight nights at the Odéon; and Hélène Peyron (1858) and L’Oncle Million (1860) were also favourably received. But of his other plays, some of them of real merit, only the Conjuration d’Amboise (1866) met with any great success. Bouilhet died on the 18th of July 1869, at Rouen. Flaubert published his posthumous poems with a notice of the author, in 1872.
See also Maxime du Camp, Souvenirs littéraires (1882); and H. de la Ville de Mirmont, Le Poète Louis Bouilhet (1888).