Lost to scholars for the past 90 years, “The Cherry Picker” recently resurfaced in the hands of Baltimore native Dorothy Bair.
“The reappearance of this major canvas by 19th-century French academic painter William Adolphe Bouguereau is pretty rare,” said Curator Eik Kahng of the Walters Art Museum, where Bair donated Bouguereau’s portrait of a blond cherubic little girl on her tip-toes, reaching for a handful of ripe cherries.
The Bair family acquired “The Cherry Picker,” or “Une Petite fille ceuillant des cérises,” in 1943, according to the Walters. Bair fondly remembers the painting hanging in the family’s living room in Baltimore.
Because of the painting’s high value, Kahng feared the owners would choose to sell it. “That’s what makes the Bair family so admirable,” Kahng said. “They could have made a very tidy profit, but [Bair] chose to donate it to the city of Baltimore through the museum. She recognized the value of it from a cultural point of view.”
“The Cherry Picker” is exactly the one oil painting the Walters’ 18th- and 19th-century art department was missing, Kahng added. “That’s the real magic. We have one of the richest collections of 19th-century French academicism work anywhere, but we didn’t have an oil from Bouguereau. And we wouldn’t have been able to afford to purchase it. It’s certainly well beyond our acquisition means.”
Ironically, William Walters, the 19th-century Baltimore art collector whose acquisitions fill the Walters named in honor of him, decided not to buy Bouguereau artworks because he considered the prices too high. Kahng wouldn’t reveal what “The Cherry Picker” is worth in the modern market, but Bouguereaus have sold for millions at auction.
“Students study Bouguereau for his exquisite skill and paint quality,” said Francesca Schuler Guerin, director of the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore. In 1901, Guerin’s grandfather, the renowned artist Hans Schuler Sr., became the first American sculptor to receive a Salon Gold Medal, which Bouguereau signed.
Bouguereau fell out of favor when modernism emerged and “was then thought of sort of being sappy, but with a resurging interest in realism, he’s coming back in vogue,” Guerin added.
