"The First Communion" by Elizabeth Nourse |
After being exhibited in the New Salon and two other exhibits in 1895, the painting was finally purchased in 1904 by Cincinnatian, Mrs. Susannah Walsh Hinkle, who initially hung it for a number of years at her estate, Belcamp, before giving it to the Cincinnati Catholic Women's Association, an organization of which she was a member and served as president. Both at their initial headquarters on 4th Street near the Taft Museum, and later on Marian Avenue near Xavier University, it was a beloved treasure and hung in the reception room for seventy years. But as the years passed, they realized that Nourse's masterpiece needed to be in a museum, and contacted the Cincinnati Art Museum's curator of American Art and Sculptor, Julie Aronson, 'who knew at first glance she wanted the painting. Over the years, the Cincinnati Art Museum curator had seen photographic reproductions of 'The First Communion,' but when she stood in front of the original 118-year-old, oil-on-canvas painting, she couldn’t help but be stunned by its beauty and scale. 'I immediately brought our director to see it,' says Aronson. 'Nourse was the only female painter from Cincinnati who achieved an international reputation during her lifetime.'
After the purchase, an exhibition was put together around the new acquisition with 27 other paintings, watercolors, drawings and cloth dolls which the artist had completed between 1880 and 1913. 'Elizabeth Nourse: Rites of Passage' was a wonderful show, and the painting has remained displayed in the Cincinnati Wing of the museum. I have loved standing before 'The First Communion' many times to admire and study it.
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