The Broken Pitcher - William Bouguereau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze

More often than not, people remember their first time like it was yesterday. I do too. The first time a painting hit me like a sucker punch was in 1993, I was 18 yrs old, attending a star-studded touring exhibition of masterpieces from The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco at the Australian National Gallery. There were Rembrandts, Renoirs, Manets, Degas, Cezannes… But the one that I remember most vividly is this painting by William Bouguereau called The Broken Pitcher.

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I am not sure if it was the profound sadness of her gaze or the explanation of the symbolism of the broken pitcher on the label but I had an intense emotional reaction to this work. I couldn’t identify it at the time – was I feeling sad? uneasy? confused?

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A staunch follower of the French academic tradition, Bouguereau was one of the most respected and highly decorated artists of his day. He exhibited at the Salon and his opulent, idealized female nudes as well as his historical paintings sold often and at very high prices. But his polished surfaces were detested and mocked by many of his modernist contemporaries as outdated and backward.

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Bouguereau’s peasant girl echoes another prepubescent girl painted 120 years earlier by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Although the two girls are seemingly from very different worlds, the sexual innuendo of both paintings and, consequently, the girls’ destinies are strikingly similar. Although neither artist explicitly states it, the allegory of the broken vessel is clear – the girls are quite literally damaged goods, the loss of “innocence” (a euphemism for virginity) rendering them unsuitable for a “respectable” life (a euphemism for marriage and child bearing). The pitcher - a signifier of the female anatomy is represented as detached from the female body. We, the viewers, have more of a claim to it, than the girls themselves.

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It was 1993 and for the first time in my life I understood how twisted the world was where a woman’s virginity was considered more valuable than her life.

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William A. Bouguereau, The Broken Pitcher, 1891, Legion of Honor Museum San Francisco

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Broken Vessel, 1771, Musée du Louvre