Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau: Huges Merle

"Maternal Affection" by Hugues Merle

"From Elizabeth Gardner's earliest Salon entries to her latest, she is listed as 'élève [student] de (Hugues) Merle.' In the Salon livret of 1875, Jules Lefebvre is added to the list and, in 1877, we see the first mention of Bouguereau as her teacher. In her August 29 letter 1866 Elizabeth mentions, 'My teacher, Mr. Merle, has just been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. . . He allows me to go to his studio whenever I please which is a privilege.' 

Hugues Merle was born at Saint-Martin and studied in Paris with Léon Cogniet. He was a genre, portrait and history painter who exhibited at the Salon from 1847 to 1880. Though he is in the Salon catalogue as Elizabeth Gardner's teacher throughout her career, he died in 1881. It is not clear exactly how long she studied with him. She was very fond of the artist and spent the summer of 1873 at Etretat with his family as stated in an excerpt from a letter:

'Mr. Merle, one of the most distinguished French artists has invited me to spend the Summer in his family and offers one half of his studio. I was his pupil and he always takes a great interest in what I am doing. He earns $10,000 a year and when I do the same you shall come out and have a good time.'

Certainly his financial success provided incentive to Gardner to exploit that market through their agents - but more importantly, she was naturally drawn to similar subject matter. Her entire corpus of known paintings is composed of either genre or portraiture. She had reached her mature style very early in her career and maintained it, with minor adaptations."

To be continued

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