Day 9: Bouguereau

Day 9: Bouguereau!!

Today we went to a medieval castle in the middle of the city. It was called the art institute of Richardo Barnand. Barnand was a Brazilian millionaire, who used his money to buy a ton of art work. He show cased it in a beautiful medieval-like castle, which he tucked away behind about a quarter of a mile of palm trees in the city.

He show cased a fast collection of swords, many of which had names and where they came from attached. There were also many Asian art pieces; ivory work from China, and gold and ivory work from India. There were many pieces by Brazilian artists that were Pre-Columbian and very interesting because they depicted the views of what early European settlers thought Brazil and the locals looked like.

Some of the most interesting pieces in the museum consisted of a few Rodin’s. Rodin was the only impressionist sculpture; many may recognize his work, The Thinker. The institute had a Rodin the Thinker. What some may not realize is that Rodin would make molds of his pieces and fabricate the same piece multiple times, so there are many Rodin’s, but you can’t do that with paintings. That leads me to the Bouguereau.

They had a Bouguereau. He was a French academic artist, meaning he dealt with the nude female body, almost neo-classical but not quite. The point is that at the turn of the 20^th century he was one of the most famous artists in the world. Yet, when impressionism started to gain notoriety, his popularity declined. Much has not been written about Bouguereau and his work because of the shift from academic to impressionistic art, but art historians have recently been re-captivated by his works.

The only disappointed I had was the lack of information concerning many of the other paintings, most did not have plaques. Overall it was a very interesting place and I highly recommend visiting.