It’s very difficult to appreciate a piece of sculpture without viewing it in person.
I appreciate Bouguereau more than the other academic painters, but what I don’t like about him is the opposite of what I don’t like about Kinkade: those times when the former slavishly adheres to realistic lighting at expense of aesthetics. Whereas Kinkade, despite his title as painter of light, has different sections of paintings that look cribbed together from slightly different angles that detract from the effect. I like Kinkade less than average for his genre.
Sometimes Bouguereau has less harsh and more fantastic lighting on the faces of his paintings, and that is when I like them the most. (His realistic shadows in general I don’t dislike. In a 2 dimensional painting, however, having half of a face very bright with the other half very dark will almost always look distracting, no matter how correct it would be.)
Eh, I still like his stuff. Here is Rest in Harvest by Bouguereau.
Everyone hears the phrase “Sistine Chapel” and thinks about Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes. Which are absolutely masterful and amazing no doubt about it.
But when you’re actually there in person, his painting of the Last Judgement absolutely steals the show. It’s totally compelling compared to the ceiling, and yet there’s not much comment on it w.r.t. the Sistine Chapel relative to the ceiling. It’s 40 feet high and 45 feet wide, covers an entire wall, and the colors are every bit as vivid as the picture shows.
Paris, which really is wonderful, also has a Rodin Museum. Definitely worth seeing.
It has the Thinker, of course, but also The Kiss, which is perhaps more loved.
https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee/collections/oeuvres/kiss
Wow, that is quite unlike the rest of his stuff yet I still enjoy it. Had I seen it in a museum, I would have been reminded of Bouguereau by the general human art (even though the face itself is shadowed yet not shadowed harshly), but would not have positively guessed it was him because the grain is also clearly a focus of the painting yet is not as photorealistic as his usual focuses are.
I love Bouguereau. My favorite of his is The Nut Gatherers.
American Gothic is such an iconic, ubiquitous, and often clichéd work, that it’s hard to appreciate exactly how powerful it is. I certainly didn’t, until I saw it in person at the Art Institute of Chicago. I stood, mouth slightly agape, for a good ten minutes, thinking “Okay, I see why this is a masterpiece of American art…”
I can’t find a link but I think that was the inspiration for a somewhat more explicitly erotic take on the theme.
My favorite painting is the one of Henry VIII holding a turkey leg though I am having a hard time finding a copy of it online to display here.
Was it any of these? 
Probably thinking of the photograph instead.
Wrong Tudor is holding the turkey leg in the first one.
You guys are making me nostalgic for the oeuvre of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge and Sir Edwin Landseer.
Yeah, I’m currently reading the journal of Marie Bashkirtseiff.
This, and it had more of an impact on me, and I looked at it more deeply, when I was told that it was the farmer’s daughter in the painting, not his wife, as I’d assumed.
I always think of The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Especially recently.
I was especially struck by how young the couple was. I could be wrong, but I read that Grant Wood used his sister and his dentist as the models.
I’ve seen that in the flesh and it is wonderful.
In general I think there is a huge amount of roman sculpture that is barely known by name and without any real attribution to a specific artist but that is truly breathtaking.
If you ever get the chance to take in the museums in the Forum of Rome, particularly the Capitoline and Palatine museums, you will see sculptural wonder after wonder.
These might be too new to be considerd “classic”, but think of any of the movements that “no one” does anymore, such as the Hudson River School, Ashcan Movement, or Social Realism, but which did have great pieces.
Heck - think of Op Art.
I find it sad that so much of Roman sculpture is Greek, and we’ll never see the originals they were copied from.