Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau: In the Studio of Tissier

"Self-Portrait of Elizabeth
Gardner Bouguereau"

"It is interesting to note that tuition for instruction in the ateliers of Paris was often much higher for women than it was for men, usually double. The Academy Julian charged women sixty francs a month for half-days; men paid twenty-five francs for the same instruction. Carolus-Duran charged women one hundred francs a month for half-days; men were offered full days for thirty francs a month. The Academy Colarossi, at forty francs a month for half-days, was the only studio to charge men and women the same fee. The reason rates were kept low for men was in order to compete with government-run schools where tuition was free - and women were not admitted into those schools until 1897.

How much Elizabeth Gardner would have been able to afford for private instruction we do not know. It is clear that a good part of her income came from making copies in the Louvre for orders she had received. She identified some of the sacrifices involved in a letter:

'We are well and very busy. Working at the Louvre from 7 1/2 a.m. till 6 at night part of the time, and occasionally when we have friends here giving all our time to fun... I hope soon to go into a studio to study. I am working early and late, busy with anatomy every evening.'

In the next letter to her brother, John, she spoke of entering the studio of Jean-Baptiste Ange Tissier (1814-1876) for her first private instruction:

'I have begun at the studio. All was new at first - the walk of two miles, and working from models to which I was unaccustomed, and the strange faces around me. I knew that Mons. Tissier had pupils now beginning their third year whom he did not yet allow to color, so with a sigh I closed my paintbox and started the first morning with porte-crayon and paper. I worked with crayon two days and was then told to provide myself with canvas and paints, which you may be sure I remembered the new morning.

My admiration for Mr. Tissier is not boundless. He is a Frenchman of about fifty, tender and irritable, drawing is his forte, but his color is bad. I shall learn what I can there while 'watching the horizon'. Our class is small and select. The French element consists of pet daughters all over eighteen, who are brought by their Mothers or nurses in the morning and called for at night. But they are full of fun and train enough when left to themselves. After fruitless attempts to learn the pronunciation of my name they submit to me whether I object to being called 'la petite sauvage' inasmuch as I come from a country of savages!'

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Elizabeth Jane Gardner: Her Life, Her Work, Her Letters," MA Thesis by Charles Pearo, McGill University, 1997)