The price book

The Price Book from 1901 is an unusual title in Bouguereau's oeuvre — suggesting a genre scene rather than an allegorical or religious subject. A young woman or girl reading or consulting a price book or ledger situates the image in a specific domestic or commercial world rather than the mythological or devotional spaces that dominated his famous work. This points to a lesser-known strand of his practice in which he documented everyday scenes from middle-class French life with the same technical accomplishment he brought to his more celebrated allegorical compositions.

The genre setting requires Bouguereau to manage the interplay between the figure and specific props — the book or ledger, the furniture or setting — that anchor the scene in recognisable domestic reality. His technique remains constant regardless of the shift in subject matter: smooth, luminous, precisely observed throughout.