Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau: Continuing On

"The Call from Above"
by Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau

"The notarized marriage contract between Bouguereau and Gardner stipulated that if Elizabeth were to outlive her husband, she would receive a yearly annuity of 25,000 francs ($5,000) for the rest of her life. She was also given full use of the Paris apartment and studio. Through the final days of her life, she lived modestly, as she always had, and continued to send small sums of money home. 

She never returned to La Rochelle in the summers. Instead, she spent August and September, as she had before her marriage, at Royat in what she affectionately referred to as her 'cobweb villa'. She also regained her studio at 73, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. This space she shared with a painter by the name of Henri and later with Boyd Waters in exchange for which they kept it in good order, did odd jobs and ran errands. Thus, the detour that married life had set before her, led her back to a path she had followed for so many years as a professional artist.

Her reliance on painting helped her deal with the sorrow, and she began 'hiding everything in colors.' In 1906, she submitted 'l'Appel d'en haut' ('The Call from Above'), a painting which she described as 'a souvenir for my lost artist... My husband at nearly 80 years of age still painted, and this is a good likeness of him in the last days of his life.' Elizabeth was aware that religious subjects and carefully finished works were no longer in vogue. However, she continued to paint in this style because it suited her tastes and was representative of her training. 

Nevertheless, she exhibited at four more Salons, up to and including the 1914 Salon before the outbreak of the war with Germany. She persevered in her efforts to abolish the duty on foreign works of art and wrote an article for The American Free Act League in protest. Many of the letters after 1914 are filled with news of the war. Gardner acted as an intermediary between wealthy Americans and agencies that provided aid wounded French soldiers and their families. One organization among the many she supported was the Artists Fraternity, an association that offered financial and moral support to families of artists who were absent at war.'"

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