Spanierman Gallery | An American Art Blog

Elizabeth Nourse (1859-1938) "View of the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris," ca. 1905, watercolor and charcoal on paper laid on board, 16 x 12 1/2 in.

Carol Lowrey

In 2008, Spanierman Gallery published a catalogue featuring a selection of works on paper from the gallery’s holdings.  As a contributor, my assignments included writing an essay on Elizabeth Nourse’s View of the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, a watercolor executed around 1905 when the artist was residing in a fourth-floor apartment at 80, rue d’Assas (pictured below), in the 6^th Arrondissement.  For those of you not familiar with Nourse, she was born in Mount Healthy, a suburb of Cincinnati.  After attending art schools in the United States, she moved to Paris in 1887, studying briefly at the Académie Julian before being advised by her teacher, Gustave Boulanger, that she was so well ahead of others in the women’s class that she could better develop her skills on her own.  Nourse went on to paint intimate depictions of French and Dutch peasants, as well as portraits, flowers, landscapes and cityscapes, alternating between an academic realist manner and a looser, impressionist style depending on her subject.  She thrived in the French capital, distinguishing herself by becoming the first American woman elected an associate member of the recently established Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (1895).  On the occasion of her death, a writer for the New York Times (10 October 1938) deemed her “one of the most distinguished artists in the American colony in Paris.” Read the rest of this entry »