Adolphe William Bouguereau had a long, successful career as an academic painter, exhibiting in the annual Paris Salons for more than 50 years. His paintings of religious, mythological, and genre subjects were carefully composed and painstakingly finished. Thus he opposed the admission of works by the impressionists to the Salon, because he believed that their paintings were no more than unfinished sketches. After a period of neglect following his death, Bouguereau's paintings were returned to view as part of a renewed interest in and reappraisal of academic painting and of Ecole des Beaux-Arts works in general.