William-Adolphe Bouguereau belongs to the cadre of artists that dominated official Salon exhibitions every year.

Until Gustave Courbet blew up all expectations of what paintings were “supposed” to be about, dudes like Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme ruled the Salon scene. These tried-and-true Salon artists gave the establishment what they wanted, never daring to stray from the subjects and styles of painting that kept them famous. That’s why this Bouguereau painting looks exactly like all his other paintings, with his trademark dough-faced children being adorable in a pastoral scene. In this particular painting, these children are young and blissfully unaware of the cruelties of life.

Like the Precious Moments figurines of his time, Bouguereau’s paintings were popular because they upheld traditional values and reinforced the status quo. His photo-idealistic style was the visual candy that placated the bourgeois masses. For many artists including the Realists, these artistic goals to render an idealized worldview lost their appeal by the mid-nineteenth century, and painting evolved as artists began to challenge the stuffy and outdated sensibility of the Academy.

Even as tastes began to change due to artists pushing the boundaries of acceptability at the turn of the twentieth century, there was always an audience of stodgy people who clung to art that was simple and easy to like. For example, take James E. Scripps, who purchased this painting in 1886. As the founder of the Detroit Evening News, Scripps made his fortune in the media and publishing business. Today, Scripps operates over sixty local and nine national stations that you've likely seen on TV.

Needless to say, the Scripps family had plenty of money to enjoy the finer things in life. In 1882, Scripps wrote a book describing the five months he spent touring the great museums and cultural attractions of Europe. Like a college girl who studies abroad in Rome for a semester, Scripps turned this five-month experience into his entire personality, and began amassing an impressive art collection.

In 1889, Scripps kickstarted the Detroit Institute of Arts’ esteemed European art collection, which is now regarded as one of the largest in the United States. He donated a small fortune and one hundred Old Master paintings, including works by Albrecht Dürer and Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, among others. Along with the over $50,000 in cash, the Scripps art collection was valued at nearly $75,000. As with all insanely rich people, philanthropy ran in the family. Mrs. William E. Scripps, the wife of James E. Scripps’s son, donated this painting to the DIA in 1954.