William-Adolphe Bouguereau was one of the most famous and influential French academic artists of the later nineteenth century. His Broken Pitcher of 1891 exhibits many of the stylistic qualities central to academic teaching of the time, including the careful description of forms with clear contours and smooth three-dimensional modeling, an idealized approach to the human figure, and balanced, architectural massing within the composition. It also manifests the penchant for infusing sentimentality and even light eroticism into the most time-honored subjects.

In theme, The Broken Pitcher draws on a fashion for peasant or rural imagery pioneered by Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet around mid-century. Bouguereau produced from the 1860s onward a long series of one-or-two figure compositions that were often sexually allusive, featuring French and Italian country girls. Here, the cracked pitcher stands for the loss of virginity, the spout of the well provides a counterbalancing male symbol, and the girl’s plaintive expression erases any doubts about the picture’s true meaning, calculated to appeal to the prurient interests of a male-dominated upper-middle class French art market. Nevertheless, Bouguereau’s flawless technique and play upon the heart have always given the painting broad public appeal.

This work is recorded as having entered the collection of Mr. and Mrs. M.H. de Young in San Francisco by May 1893 and is very likely the first painting by Bouguereau to reach California.

-Steve A. Nash, Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1999)