Elizabeth Nourse: The New Salon

"Fisher Girl of Picardy" by Elizabeth Nourse

"It was on a trip to Italy in 1890, while in Rome, that Elizabeth Nourse received an invitation to join the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts - hereafter called the New Salon - a recently formed group of artists that had broken away from the Societe Nationale des Artistes Francais. Artist Ernest Meissonier led the dissidents in planning a separate Salon, ostensibly because of a dispute over the awards given at the 1889 Salon. In fact, this action was a revolt of the moderns, such as Puvis de Chavannes and Carolus-Duran, against the conservative standards of the established artists who served on the jury of what we'll call the 'Old Salon.' 

The latter group included many of the great painter-teachers from the Academie Julian's various schools - men such as Bouguereau, Benjamin Constant, Lefebvre, and Tony Robert-Fleury. A number were also stockholders in Rodolphe Julian's academies, so that in effect, those affiliated with Julian dominated the Old Salon. The younger artists of the New Salon included Albert Besnard, Jean-Charles Cazin, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret and Auguste Rodin, all of whom were to become close friends of Nourse's in the years that followed.

Nourse promptly sent he four entries she had intended for the Old Salon to the new group's exhibition at the Champs de Mars. It took courage for her to turn her back on the prestigious Old Salon, where she had met with success, and join forces with the progressives. As it happened, the New Salon provided her not only with sympathetic associates but with a much greater opportunity to show her work and have it reviewed. She took the risk, however, that the new group might fail to gain public acceptance and that she would lose her opportunity to establish her reputation as a Salon painter. Both European and American collectors of the late nineteenth century considered the approval of a Salon jury necessary to guarantee the quality of their purchases."

To be continued

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