Bouguereau reluctantly left his studies to return to his family, now residing in Bordeaux. Here he was taught to draw and paint by Louis Sage, who had studied under Ingres. In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons.

At the age of twelve, Bouguereau went to Mortagne-sur-Gironde to stay with his uncle Eugène, a priest, and developed a love of nature, religion and literature. The family moved to Saint-Martin-de-Ré in 1832. He had an elder brother, Alfred, and a younger sister, Marie (known as Hanna), who died when she was seven. The son of Théodore Bouguereau (born 1800) and Marie Bonnin (1804), known as Adeline, William was brought up a Catholic. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France, on 30 November 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter.

Whisperings of love bouguereau