35. Atelier de William Adolphe Bouguereau (La Rochelle 1825-1905) Philomèle et Progné (réduction) porte une signature 'W. BOUGUEREAU' (en bas à droite) porte une signature au crayon sous le cadre huile sur toile bears a signatures 'W. BOUGUEREAU' (lower right), also bears a signature in pencil beneath the mount oil on canvas 60 x 50cm (23 5/8 x 19 11/16in). Provenance With Galerie Jean Lorenceau & Cis, who sold the painting to the Cleveland Museum of Art, in 27 July 1973 (according to a document conserved at the Documentation of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris) Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, formerly inventory number TR 15913/5 (according to the label to the reverse) Ruth and Sherman Lee, Cleveland Collection Private Collection, Chapell Hill, North Carolina Private Collection, France Literature Geneviève Lacambre, Le Musée du Luxembourg en 1874. Peintures, Grand Palais, Paris, 1974, p. 36 under n. 28 (at that time the painting was at the Cleveland Museum) Damien Bartoli & Frederick Ross, William Bouguereau. Catalogue Raisonné of his Painted Work, New York, 2010, p. 69, n. 1861/05A The present painting seems to be a reduction of the Bouguereau painting of the same subject now in the National Museum of the Palace of Fontainebleau, acquired by the State on the first of March 1862, for the flat of the Empress Eugenie and which was sent directly to the Tuileries Palace by Bouguereau himself at the end of March 1862, today at the Chateau de Fontainebleau. In the exhibition catalogue for the Le Musée du Luxembourg en 1874. Peintures, Grand Palais, which included the prime version, reference is made to a reduced version (with the same dimensions of the present lot) being in the collection of the Cleveland Museum. In the Catalogue Raisonné of the artist, Bartoli and Ross note that there is not enough information about the early provenance of this work to confirm authenticity. As Louis d'Argencourt has noted in the catalogue for the exhibition William Bouguereau. 1825-1905, held at the Petit Palais in 1984, the artist was known to produce reduced versions of his paintings within his studio. These reductions were often used as the basis of engravings made after the artist's work. This composition is one of the most characteristic examples of academic art. Through the interplay of their eyes, the painting shows the complicity of the two sisters, and the musical instruments evoke their transformation into birds by the gods: Philomèle becomes a nightingale and Progné, a swallow. Bouguereau gave an explanation of the subject in a letter to one of his friends, called Abel: "a melancholy young woman, withdrawn in the woods and another inspired by the Gods inviting her to come out of her isolation and show her talents".