Elizabeth Nourse: Paris

 

"La Fête de Grand-père (Grandfather's Birthday)"
by Elizabeth Nourse

"Like most American artists of her generation, Elizabeth Nourse dreamed of studying in one of the famous Paris ateliers. So to this end she and Louise studied French and saved money. By 1887 they had accumulated five thousand dollars from the sale of their art and from the residue of their father's estate. They stored their furniture because they planned to return, then sailed on the 'Westernland' from New York on July 20th. Elizabeth was then twenty-eight years old. 

During this journey Nourse kept a notebook in which she recorded her thoughts as they departed. 'Such a melancholy feeling! There is so much we will see and do before we come back - and then, will we ever come back?'

Arriving in Paris in late August, the sisters checked into a hotel for women on the Left Bank, and immediately set out to see the mural decorations in the city's churches and public buildings. The very first noted were Thomas Couture's in Saint Eustache, which she pronounced 'exquisite.' She also studied paintings by artists including Jules Bastien-Lepage, Paul Baudry, Leon Bonnat, Jules Breton, Julien Dupre, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Leon Lhermitte at the Musee du Luxembourg, unaware that she would be showing her work with paintings such as theirs in the 1888 spring Salon of the Societe Nationale des Artistes Francais.

The Nourses found an atelier at 8, rue de la Grande Chaumiere near the Luxembourg Gardens in the Latin Quarter, where most of the American artists lived. The rent for such a studio was 40 francs (about $8) for six weeks. She proceeded to enroll at the Academie Julian for women, where Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre were teachers. Rudolphe Julian, the director, had been the first to offer art training in Paris exclusively for women. He was so successful in this enterprise that by 1892 he was operating five different studios, three for women only. The latter offered rooms arranged to satisfy different sensibilities - one for drawing from the nude model, one for working from a draped model, and a third, with a separate entrance and staircase, for those who did not even wish to glimpse a nude model.

Nourse's studied drawing of a class model indicates that she chose the more exacting discipline of drawing from the nude. She also made two sketches of Lefebvre in his role as teacher at Julian's with these words issuing from his mouth: 'Not bad - not bad at all.'" [One wonders if this had been his comment to her!]

To be continued

 

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