Title of Artwork: “Equality before Death”
Artwork by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Year Created 1885
Summary of Equality before Death
At the age of 23, Bouguereau produced his first major painting, Equality, after spending two years at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux-Arts. When his family put so much pressure on him, the artist knew he had no choice but to succeed. He was, in the words of critic Léon Plée, “in a hurry to make his name” at the time.
All About Equality before Death
Bouguereau’s first Salon submission was a stunning, large-format painting depicting an angel of death draping a shroud over the body of a young man. Anyone would be moved by the image’s depiction of death’s inescapability. A preparatory drawing notes: “Equality.
The angel of death will shroud you in death if you haven’t done any good deeds here on Earth” It’s important to note that the equality being discussed here isn’t the same as the one that Liberals across Europe sought to achieve in 1848.
Bouguereau adheres to a traditionalist and fundamentalist religious view, according to which social and political equality exist only in the afterlife. Bouguereau’s anxieties about the political changes of his time and his own personal doubts about the future are reflected in this painting.
The painting’s frieze-like structure and concise style harken back to the purist Neo-Classical style of English artist John Flaxman (1755-1826). Its dramatic, melancholy tone also ties it to the Romantic movement.
Jeremy dictating his prophecies and Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) and Henry Lehmann’s Jeremy dictating his Prophecies by Henry Lehmann (1814-1882) remind us of similar implacable angel figures.
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Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
