he winner of our $1,000 competition is Joshua LaRock a former winner of an ARC Scholarship and a past student of the Water Street Atelier, an ARC Approved Atelier school. He happened to have noticed this very painting being advertized for sale on the website of Rehs Gallery and was the first of 3 people who got it right out of a few hundred who tried.

The reason I ran this competition is because this was painted by William Bouguereau in 1875 right at the beginning of the period of Impressionism's supposed birth.

It's a detail portion of his 1875 painting, Orientale a La Grenade and the impressionistic rendering is nothing like the work and technique for which William Bouguereau was celebrated and for which he continues to be famous.



This painting singlehandedly disproves the "brilliant originality" of Impressionist techniques and their source as reported in most Modernist art history text books from the past 80 years.

Clearly Bouguereau knew perfectly how to use such methods to create "selective focus" since the evident subject of this work is the girls enigmatic expression, much like the Mona Lisa, as well as what she seems to be engaged in doing...selling pomegranates.

Impressionist techniques were used for many generations before this time for creating oil studies and for selective focus of which William Bouguereau was a great master, as he was with everything one could do with oil paints. Furthermore, Impressionism is usually associated with the Salon de Refuse was originated by Napoleon III in 1863 and was a dismal failure. Research now tells us that the event had nothing to do with Impressionism since it was created as a response to all of the artists whe received rejections from the Paris Salon and were complaining bitterly to the officials. In truth the rules had already been liberalized in 1849 after the 1848 Revolutions throughout Europe, so that by 1863 roughly 40% of the more than 5,000 entries were being accepted.

So few artists were willing to participate in the Salon de Refuses that the next year, 1864 it was discontinued after a far worse turnout than the year before.

Then in 1874 it was resurrected, not by Manet as has been claimed in so many Modernist essays, but by Ernst Louis Meissonier who has been considered one of those evil academicians by the same modernist historians.

It's been taught that in the 1870's Impressionism, with alleged original and creative techniques, exploded onto the art world.

Meanwhile it's clear that Bouguereau had all of those same techniques already in his arsenal, but rarely saw the need to use them other than in far off landscapes where he in fact regularly used such methods as a way of muting the distant elements to avoid having them compete for attention with the main subjects.

We thank everyone who participated in this contest, and may from time to time offer additional contests when we feel there is a point or important piece of knowledge to be learned, shared or demonstrated by doing so.