Elizabeth Nourse: Religious Work

"Cappuchin Monk" by Elizabeth Nourse

"Elizabeth Nourse's oeuvre contains only a few religious pictures, of which two were painted in Assisi and Rome, the historic centers of her faith. Assisi was a place of religious pilgrimage for Elizabeth and Louise, both of whom had become members of the Third Order of Saint Francis, a lay group that observes a modified version of the Franciscan rule. Certain religious practices are required, but the primary rule is that members perform acts of personal charity in the spirit of Saint Francis, a requirement the Nourses took very seriously and incorporated into their daily lives. The result was their becoming deeply involved in the lives of Elizabeth's models, feeding their children, helping the sick and elderly in their families, and performing innumerable personal services for them. Because Elizabeth shared in their lives, she was able to portray urban and rural working people with a depth of understanding that eluded artists who knew them only as picturesque models.

In a letter from Assisi to her twin, she described one of them, 'Le pardon de Saint Francois d'Assise,' her most ambitious work to date, as 'a huge picture in the church with at least twenty models and numerous dabs which represent another twenty. On loan from its owner, a Cincinnati woman, this painting and 'Peasant Women of Borst' were exhibited in the Cincinnati Room at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. [Sadly its current location is unknown.]

Nourse's Italian sojourn produced at least twenty-five paintings that she was to exhibit later, including 'A la fontaine.' The reception this work received in Paris in 1891 proved that the artist's decision to join the New Salon was a fortunate one. Both 'A la fontaine' and another work were illustrated in the Salon's livret, an honor that would never have been accorded a young American's entries in the Old Salon."

To be continued 

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

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.")

Elizabeth Nourse: Russia

"La Petite Soeur" by Elizabeth Nourse

"In January 1889 Elizabeth took a trip without Louise to Russia with her friend Tolla Certowicz, a sculpture student at the Academie Julian. The two women journeyed to the Certowicz estate near Kiev by way of Warsaw and were six days en route. Elizabeth wrote a vivid account of this adventure to her twin sister, Adelaide:

'At length we reached the last station, and there we found the sleighs which had been waiting for hours. There were three of them - four horses each, one for us, one for the baggage, and one carrying an immense torch, close to the ground, to drive off the wolves and to show the way.

I shall never forget my first arctic night; at least it answered all the purposes of an arctic night. . . . The scene was ravishing, I was perfectly delighted, forgetting all my woes, my hunger, my fatigue, the cold - everything - for there was something intoxicating in that long night's ride. 

The drivers were so picturesque, the sleighs, the prancing horses, with their hundreds of bells, and then the beautiful blue sky above us, glittering with stars, and the snow, snow covering everything.

I was anxious to see some wolves, but probably the torch kept them off. However, it was better not to have been eaten up, although I would rather have liked to be able to describe it afterwards. I was sincerely glad when we had to cross some water, which was considered rather dangerous, and when we lost our way, my joy was complete . . . and when we arrived here the servants all came out to meet us and kissed our hands.'

Elizabeth spent six weeks in the Ukraine and made many sketches and some watercolors there, but she found it impossible to paint the peasants because it was not customary for the landowners to go into their cottages and she herself could not communicate with them. She therefore took some peasant costumes back to Paris and in 1895 fashioned an interior in her studio to resemble a Russian cottage, blocked the light to simulate its small, high windows, and painted 'Les fileuses russes.'"

To be continued

 

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

Elizabeth Nourse: Barbizon

"Head of a Breton Woman (Jeune fille de Plougastel)"
by Elizabeth Nourse

"In Elizabeth Nourse's continuing struggles to support herself and her sister, Louise was an indispensable assistant. Not only was she a frugal housekeeper but an astute business manager and secretary who took care of all shipping arrangements to the hundreds of exhibitions that Elizabeth entered over the years and handled all related financial details. As a result, Elizabeth was left completely free to devote herself to her work. A rapid painter, she always had a number of works on exhibition at the same time. It should be noted that all of the exhibitions she entered were juried. It was thus a testimony to her stature as an artist that her work was concurrently shown all over Europe and the United States.

Nourse's first trip outside Paris that summer was in the nature of a pilgrimage, to visit the village of Barbizon, locale of Jean-Francois Millet, the French artist she most admired and emulated. Deeply attracted to Millet's subject matter and to his simplicity in portraying it, she must have studied his work with care at his retrospective exhibition in Paris earlier that year, for her very first sketch upon arriving in Barbizon was of the cottage in which Millet had lived and worked. She sought out the woman who had been Millet's model for 'The Angelus' and made a fine character sketch of her, inscribed 'La mere Adele' and even bought the cloak the woman had worn when she posed for Millet, as well as a spinning wheel. Her admiration for the French painter was apparently well known to her friends, several of whom gave her reproductions of his paintings for birthday and Christmas gifts.

Louis wrote glowing descriptions to her sister Adelaide of the summer in Barbizon where, she said, Everywhere you look you see a Millet picture.' The sisters were delighted to be in the countryside, which moved Louise to exclaim, 'Oh, the beautiful country, la Belle France! We have found it at last.'"

To be continued

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

Elizabeth Nourse: The Paris Salon

"La Mere" by Elizabeth Nourse

"After only three months of study at the Academie Julian, Nourse was advised by her teachers to leave and work alone because they found her drawing excellent and felt that too much academic training might interfere with the development of her original style. She immediately set to work on 'La Mere,' her first Salon entry, and went to Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran for criticism. The painting was not only accepted by the jury of the Societe Nationale des Artistes Francais, but was hung 'on the line,' a signal honor for a new exhibitor. She signed 'La Mere,' 'E. Nourse,' as she did all her early work, because she apparently thought it would be more favorably received if the public did not know she was a woman. In 1891 she began to sign her full name, 'Elizabeth Nourse,' on her Salon entries and this became her standard signature by 1904, except for small canvases on which she must have felt her full name would be obtrusive.

'La Mere' demonstrates how well Nourse understood the academic standards admired by the jurors of the Salon. First she painted an oil study of the mother's head, for which Louise carved a frame in the Pitman style. She then worked on the major painting, as she had on the study, with small brushstrokes and careful tonal gradations to give both works the finish that the more trditional French painters admired. The result displays her greatest strengths: solide draftsmanship and masterful handling of light and shadow as well as an emotional quality that never becomes sentimental.

For all its rich, dark color and academic finish, 'La Mere' was modern by nineteenth-century standards in its simplicity and realism. There are no anecdotal details and the oblique view of the figures is reminiscent of candid effects made popular by an earlier generation of French painters.

This was an auspicious beginning for the young Cincinnatian in Paris, but the next important step was to sell her work in order to support herself and Louise. Some seven years and exposure at five exhibitions, in Paris, London, Glasgow, Cincinnati and finally Washington D.C., were required before Nourse sold 'La Mere,' presumably for $300 by Parker Mann, an artist. in 1894. By 1914 was hanging in the Princeton study of Woodrow Wilson, then governor of New Jersey, along with Mrs. Wilson's own paintings."

To be continued

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

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.")

Elizabeth Nourse: Supporting Herself through Art

"Emerson Pitman" (1885) by Elizabeth Nourse

"Elizabeth now had to confront the problem of supporting herself and her sister. She continued to earn money in a variety of ways, one of which was painting decorative oil panels for Cincinnati homes. Benn Pitman, her brother-in-law, probably secured many of these commissions for her as the interior of the unique Gothic structure he had recently designed and built for his home became the model for many local projects that followed. Pitman's house, inset with carved marble panels and stained glass, was located on a hill overlooking the Ohio River. On the exotic interior woodwork - cherry, black walnut, ebony, oak and rosewood - were carved superb original design based on local flora and fauna that remain in place today. Elizabeth painted the dining room walls and the panels set above the mantel, and made architectural drawings of the rooms and furniture so that Pitman could publicize these examples of his Ruskinian  formula for American designs and handicrafts.

At least one other of Nourse's decorative commissions survives. This panel, 'Flock of Geese,' was commissioned by Alice Pike Barney, a wealthy Cincinnatian who was one of the many interesting women to support the artist. Barney studied with Nourse, whom she commissioned to paint a portrait of her daughters, and encouraged by Nourse, went to Paris for further art study in 1887.

Elizabeth's sketchbooks of this period also contain many drawings of Austin and Walter Schmidt, sons of close friends, as babies, and Emerson Pitman, the second son born to Adlaide and Benn Pitman. In a strong but sensitive drawing of Emerson in charcoal and chalk with gouache highlights, she handles the media with an almost painterly touch as she molds the facial structure with bold contours and softly textured shadows. Her interest in painting infants and mothers and children, which she shared with Mary Cassatt, seems to have begun with the births of Walter and Emerson and continued throughout her career.

In 1885 Elizabeth returned to McMicken School of Design to take advantage of the school's first course (under Thomas Noble) to offer study from the nude to women. Together with her fellow classmates from four years earlier, Caroline Lord and Laura Fry, she studied in the life class for two years before she left to study in Paris."

To be continued

 

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