Elizabeth Nourse: At Her Peak

"Les Volets clos" by Elizabeth Nourse

"In the fall of 1909, Elizabeth and Louise Nourse spent five weeks in Alsace at the summer home of the Marquise de Roy. She filled a sketchbook with views of the area and more studies of women and children and also work on 'Les Volets clos,' which became the most important work of her career when it was purchased at the 1910 New Salon by the French Ministry of Fine Arts for the state's contemporary art collection in the Musee du Luxembourg. Much publicity was generated in France and the United States about the painting. Inclusion in this collection placed Nourse among some of her most prominent American contemporaries: Alexander Harrison, Winslow Homer, Gari Melchers, John Singer Sargent, J. Alden Weir, and James Whistler.

'Les Volets clos' shows a contemplative Louise standing before a bureau in an interior of carefully graded tonal harmonies. As one critic described the atmosphere, 'The sunlight enters in vivid gold bars through green wooden shutters. The yellow of the sun and the green of the shutters borrow something from each other and give the color scheme for the entire picture. The mirror on the dresser reflects the rest of the room where the yellow and green still dominate.'

Nourse was at the peak of her career in these years just prior to World War I. Her scrapbook is filled with favorable reviews of her work in exhibitions from Paris to San Francisco, where 'L'ete' was awarded a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. She worked prodigiously to take advantage of all requests to exhibit her paintings. In 1913, for example, she prepared six oils and six works on paper for the New Salon, two oils and four watercolors for the Anglo-American Exposition in London, as well as numerous canvases for other major exhibitions. 

The year 1914 began auspiciously. Elizabeth was made an honorary member of both the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors of New York and the MacDowell Society in Cincinnati for her 'distinguished achievements.' She was also elected a member of the Philadelphia Water Color Club. In July, however, the German army invaded Belgium. World War I had begun, making the end of the art world that Nourse had known."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Cincinnati Societaire" by Mary Alice Heekin Burke in "Elizabeth Nourse, 1859-1938: A Salon Career)