Elizabeth Nourse, the first - Cincinnati History Library and Archives

Queen City Heritage
Elizabeth Nourse, the first
American woman elected a
member of the New Salon, was
born and educated in Cincinnati but spent most of her life
in Paris. She painted her Selfportrait at the age of thirty-three
and the mirror image makes
her appear to be left-handed.
Elizabeth Nourse
Spring 1983
The rediscovery of
Elizabeth Nourse
Mary Alice Heekin Burke
Institute, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Corcoran
Gallery. As a final accolade, the French government bought
her painting, Les violets clos, in 1910 for its collection of
Elizabeth Nourse, Cincinnati's most eminent contemporary art at the Musee du Luxembourg to hang
woman artist, graduated from the McMicken School of with the work of such artists as Whistler, Winslow Homer,
Design of the University of Cincinnati in 1 8 81, went to Paris and Sargent.
in 1887 when she was twenty-eight years old and lived there
Despite such recognition during the producuntil her death in 19 3 8.1 During her career, she achieved all tive years of her career, Elizabeth Nourse and her work were
the honors to which an expatriate artist could aspire. She was soon largely forgotten. Only in recent years have collectors
the first American woman elected a member of the Socfete and curators begun to demonstrate a significant interest in
Nationale des Beaux-Arts (hereafter, the New Salon) when her work. The rediscovery culminated in the opening of a
the Salon, the annual exhibition of contemporary art held major retrospective at the National Museum of American
each in Paris, was the primary showcase for international Art in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1983, and the
artists. Acceptance by the Salon jury, which was made up of simultaneous publication of a lavish catalog raisonne by
the most important artists of the day, gave an art work the the Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition, with the title
guarantee of quality that collectors and curators required to Elizabeth Nourse, 1859-1938,, a Salon Career, displayed 104
justify their purchases.
oils, watercolors, pastels, and drawings and included porNourse also won many awards in the inter- traits of women working, mother and child scenes, landnational expositions of the time, in Chicago, Nashville, scapes, and genre paintings.2 The catalog, with the same
Paris, St. Louis, and San Francisco. She was consistently title, lists some 700 works by the expatriate artist and
invited to show at the annual juried exhibitions that were a illustrates 300 of them. It comprises the broadest survey
prominent feature of the American art scene: at the Pennsyl- of European subject matter yet recovered from an American
vania Academy, the Carnegie Institute, the Chicago Art artist of this period.3
1 R ,
Mary Alice Heekin Burke, a
docent for the Cincinnati Art
Museum, served as guest curator for the Smithsonian Institution while piecing together
Nourse's career and locating
several hundred paintings.
The Elizabeth Nourse Collection
at the Cincinnati Historical
Society contains many articles
about Nourse which appeared
in magazines as well as catalogs and reviews of her work.
The obvious question arises—why has such a
distinguished artist been forgotten? One reason is that her
Realist work went out of favor after World War I, but the
most important factor is that, until recently, art history and
art criticism were written by men about male artists making
it extremely difficult to find substantial material on the life
and work of women artists. Maty Cassatt, a friend of Nourse's
in Paris, was the one American woman artist of this era who
became well publicized because she was identified with the
Impressionists, all men, who had no difficulty attracting the
attention of the press.
With few exceptions, the work of women artThe Elizabeth Nourse Papers are a treasure
ists has never commanded the market as has that of male trove of information about the artist. They include photoartists. They are usually considered "Sunday painters" who graphs of her paintings, medals she won, reviews of her
do not produce a sizeable body of work, and their paintings work, catalogs containing her entries, and notes by the
are found one to a collector making them difficult to evalu- artist's niece and donor of the collection, Melrose Pitman, as
ate. Moreover, they have rarely been the subject of one- to where some of her paintings were located. In addition,
person exhibitions and catalogs which would bring their there are numerous sketches, Nourse's estate inventory that
work to public notice.
lists some seventy-four paintings returned to Cincinnati in
The process of rediscovering Elizabeth Nourse 1938, and seventy-two letters in her correspondence dated
began with research on her paintings at the Cincinnati Art from 1 890 to 1919. Some of the items raised more questions
Museum for entries in The Golden Age: Cincinnati'Paintersofthan answers, for instance, a passport written in Russian and
the Nineteenth Century Represented in the Cincinnati Art marked, "Warsaw, January 24, 1889." This intriguing mateMuseum, a splendid catalog and exhibition organized by rial led to further research in libraries to ascertain how many
Denny Young, the museum's curator of painting. The paintings could be located.
museum files and archives provided some valuable material,
The Library of Congress proved the best
but the Elizabeth Nourse Papers at the Cincinnati Historical resource for old catalogs of all kinds, such as the Salon
Society first revealed the quality and variety of Nourse's catalogs from 1888 on, or those for international exposiwork and the extent of her fame during her working career. tions from Copenhagen to San Francisco. In these one finds
The Nourse collection which
Melrose Pitman donated to the
Society contains sketch books,
letters written by and to
Nourse, drawings, paintings,
and numerous other items. The
sketch books and diaries pro-
vided a marvelous source for
tracing her travels and
researching her painting style.
Spring 1983
Elizabeth Nourse
not only entries for Nourse paintings, but illustrations of
them as well. Various museum libraries contain catalogs of
their annual exhibitions, and it was a testimony to Nourse's
stature as an artist that her work was often illustrated in these
as well since only about thirty of some hundred works
shown yearly could be pictured in them. Handbooks published by museums also revealed those that owned Nourse
paintings, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Smith
College Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the
Newark Museum, the Grand Rapids Museum, the Art
Museum of South Australia, and the Portland (Oregon) Art
Museum.
This material together with other sources in
Cincinnati provided a substantial biography of Nourse's
early years, but her life in Europe was only sketchily documented. Then a Nourse descendant produced a scrapbook,
dated 1 880-1911, that had been maintained by the artist's
devoted sister, Louise, who lived with her all her life. This
was a researcher's dream come true— in chronological order
it contained press clippings, photographs of important
paintings that are dated and marked with the names of the
buyers, and lists of paintings entered in exhibitions. One of
the marked paintings led to a Cincinnati collector who not
only had a complementary scrapbook, dated 1911-1932,
but had also inherited eighteen of Nourse's sketchbooks.
These beautiful sketches were likewise dated and annotated
giving a record of the artist's travels in France, Holland, Italy,
Austria, Russia, Switzerland, Spain, Africa, and Alsace. In
addition, sketches that served as the basis for paintings were
outlined and signed, so that compositions of paintings that
have never been located can be determined.
The fascinating life and work of Elizabeth
Nourse emerged from this wealth of material. In 1859
she and her twin, Adelaide, were the last of ten children
born to Caleb and Elizabeth Rogers Nourse. Their parents,
descendants of pioneer New England families, had married
in Cincinnati in 1833 and shortly thereafter converted to
Catholicism. Their religion became an important force in
their lives and remained a profound influence on the lives of
their children and on Elizabeth's concerns as an artist.
Caleb Nourse was a prosperous banker whose
bank failed as a result of Cincinnati's financial decline when
the Civil War disrupted its river commerce. The three
youngest of his children, the twins and Louise, who was six
years older than they, grew up understanding that they must
prepare themselves to earn a living. Louise graduated from
Woodward High School and became a teacher and the twins
took courses at the School of Design which was open to all
qualified residents tuition free. Elizabeth, however, undertook
the full curriculum, taking in all five years of drawing and
painting and four years training in sculpture. She also studied
woodcarving, china painting, and engraving, and, after her
graduation in 18 81, returned to study for two years in the
first life classes offered to women since a nude model was
available only for male students during her school years.
Adelaide mainly studied woodcarving in the
classes inaugurated by Benn Pitman whom she was to marry
in 1882. Pitman, an Englishman and younger brother of Sir
Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand writing, had settled
in Cincinnati in 18 5 2 to estabish the Phonographic Institute
for the dissemination of the Pitman method. His avocation
was design reform and he became Cincinnati's most visible
and vocal link to the English arts and crafts movement. To
counteract the use of shoddy, machine-made home furnishings, he taught his students to value simplicity and originality
in design and fine craft work. His stated aim was to teach
women because he believed they would eventually influence
public taste through the decoration of their own homes.
From its inception in 18 7 3, the Wood Carving
Department was overwhelmingly feminine in enrollment
and most of the women came from families of social
prominence.4 Pitman also provided the teacher and materials
Elizabeth Nourse took courses
in drawing, painting, and sculpture at the School of Design
and graduated in 1881.
Both Nourse sisters, Elizabeth
and Adelaide, studied under
Benn Pitman whom Adelaide
married in 1882.
Queen City Heritage
Melrose Pitman gave the
Portrait of Benn Pitman to the
Cincinnati Historical Society.
The portrait is signed "To my
Dear Brother—Benn Pitmann
— E. Nourse 1893"
Spring 1983
Elizabeth Nourse
for a class in china painting in 18 74 and many of the women
in this class went on to become decorators at the Rookwood
Pottery.5 Adelaide became proficient in both arts while
Elizabeth was more interested in the design aspects. The
most important result for the painter of her participation in
the design reform movement was the lasting friendships she
formed among the women involved in it. Even though she
lived in Paris for nearly fifty years they never forgot her—they
admired her work, publicized it, and bought it.
Of the many women who helped the artist
achieve success, however, the two most important were her
sister, Louise, and her Cincinnati friend, Anna Seaton
Schmidt. Louise was indispensable as her companion, housekeeper, secretary, and business manager and Anna served as
her chief publicist. The latter was a successful writer and
lecturer on art who wrote enthusiastic articles about Nourse's
there. She declined because she was determined to be a
professional artist, and she set about earning a living in a
variety of ways. She executed pen and ink drawings of local
homes, such as the Rawson and Bullock residences, illustrated
magazine articles, did mural decorations, and painted portraits and flower paintings. Louise retired to keep house for
her, and the two sisters saved their money to finance further
study for Elizabeth in Paris. They were unaware that her
technique, characterized by strong draughtmanship and
masterful handling of light and shade, was already formed so
that she would have no problem competing with the best of
the young artists abroad.
work in International Studio, Art and Progress, Century Maga-
zine, and in newspapers in Cincinnati, Boston, and Washington, D.C. She frequently visited the Nourses in Paris and
joined them on their painting trips in Picardy, Brittany, Italy,
and Switzerland, so that her accounts of Nourse's work are
the most personal and knowledgeable that can be found.
In 18 80 both of Nourse's parents died and the
following year, when she graduated from the School of
Design, she was offered a position as teacher of drawing
S t . ffiforgtttff Sird)e, ©alfyoun Strafje.
Nourse had not only developed her individual
style, a realism that reinforces the subject matter, but she had
found her themes as well. Her future interest in the peasant
subjects that were so popular among the Salon painters of
her day was simply an extension of her preoccupation with
the simple subjects she painted in the Midwest—the daily
routine of rural folk, especially women at work, portraits of
Negro women, and country landscapes. One has to compare
the academic painting of the established artists who depicted
noble themes, executed with smooth brushwork and arbitrary color, to understand that Nourse's style represented the
reaction of the young, modern artist against the older
generation.
Her interest in peasant themes
was an extension of her preoccupation with the simple
subjects she had painted in the
midwest—the daily routine of
rural life, portraits of Negro
women and girls, and land-
scapes. Her Head of a Negro
Gir/ done about 1882 was
given to the Cincinnati Art
Museum by Harley I. Procter.
At first Nourse earned money
by making drawings of private
homes and illustrating books
and magazines.
Queen City Heritage
In August 1887 the sisters arrived in Paris
where they rented a studio on the Left Bank and Elizabeth
enrolled at the Academie Julian. After three months she
was advised that she needed no further instruction so she
set to work preparing La mere for the spring Salon. This
painting was not only accepted by the jury but hung "on
the line," at eye level, a signal honor for an unknown artist.
For all its rich, dark color harmonies and academic finish,
this beautiful painting was modern for its day in its simplicity and realism. Nourse was able to convey an emotional
quality that is not sentimental, and, by omitting any anecdotal details that would depict a specific mother and child,
she infused it with a universal feeling, that of any woman's
love for her child.
bition in Washington, D.C. by Parker Mann, a local artist.
By 1914 it was hanging in the Princeton study of Woodrow
Wilson, then governor of New Jersey. It is revealing that
the artist signed this work "E. Nourse" as she did all her
early paintings because she apparently felt that it would be
more favorably received if the public did not know she
was a woman. By 1891 she began to sign her full name
on her Salon entries and by 1904 this had become her
standard signature.
The Nourse sisters made their headquarters in
Paris for the next four years but they traveled widely. Elizabeth
took her only trip without Louise when she spent six weeks
with a friend in Russia in 1889 and that summer they went
to Picardy accompanied by Anna Schmidt. In 18 90 the three
women traveled through Italy together for several months
and it was in Rome that Elizabeth received an invitation to
join the New Salon. This new exhibition group was organized
by modern French artists, such as Puvis de Chavannes and
Auguste Rodin, in reaction to the conservative standards of
the established artists who served on the jury of the Old
Salon. Nourse promptly joined the rebels although she took
the risk that the new group might fail to gain acceptance and
she would lose the opportunity to become a Salon painter.
mk-.
W-vKv
This was an auspicious beginning for the young
Cincinnatian in Paris, but the next important step was to sell
her work. Tracing the history of La mere demonstrates how
difficult this could be. Some seven years and exposure at five
exhibitions were required before Nourse sold it, apparently
for $ 300. After the Salon of 18 8 8 the painting was exhibited
in London at the Continental Gallery, shown in Liverpool
the next year, then Glasgow, and again in her 1893 retrospective in Cincinnati. In 1894 it was bought at an exhiAlice Pike Barney was one of the
many interesting women who
supported Nourse. This sketch
of Barney was done in Paris
in 1888.
The Society's Family Group, a
charcoal and watercolor done
by Nourse, illustrates her continued interest in painting
infants and mothers and children.
Spring 1983
In 1888 Nourse entered La mere Gamble's collection of paintings
in the Salon of the Societe
by Cincinnati artists.
Nationale des Artistes Francais,
Paris. Her painting was accepted
and was hung "on the line"
La mere is now in Procter &
Elizabeth Nourse
Queen City Heritage
working women with a depth of understanding that eluded
artists who knew them only as picturesque subjects.
This Italian sojourn lasted a year and a half
and then the sisters spent six weeks in Borst, a remote
mountain village in southern Austria. One canvas painted
there, Peasant Women of Borst, was purchased by the
subscription of seventeen prominent Cincinnati women for
the new Cincinnati Art Museum which they had been
instrumental in establishing. It was hung there in a carved
oak frame donated by Benn Pitman.
The sisters returned to Paris for the winter,
but in July 1892 they were off again to work in Holland for
three months. In the fishing village of Volendam, a favorite
of many artists, they shared a cottage with Laura and
Henriette Wachman, expatriate friends from Cincinnati.
Elizabeth and Henriette, the painters, had a platform constructed outside their studio window so that they could
work even in cold, windy weather. Elizabeth worked so
prodigiously that she finished four large paintings as well as
some twenty-two smaller ones during that happy summer.
Anna returned home and the Nourses journeyed to Assisi where they spent six weeks. Assisi was a place
of pilgrimage for them since they had become members of
the Third Order of St. Francis, a lay group that observes a
modified version of the Franciscan rule. The primary requirement is that members perform acts of personal charity, a
pledge that the Nourses took very seriously and incorporated
into their daily lives. It resulted in 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. This
affected the way Elizabeth saw her subjects. Because she
shared in their lives, she was able to portray rural and urban
In a 1915 letter Anna Schmidt
wrote: "I was with Elizabeth
when she painted that girl on
the Etaples Dunes—it was so
cold and windy the model used
to weep...the picture
possesses in a striking degree
that stormy atmosphere of the
French coast on windy fall
days..." Fisher Girl of Picardy
was given to the Smithsonian
Institution's fine-arts collection
by Elizabeth Pilling, sister of
Anna Schmidt.
Intrigued by the Bigoudine
people and their colorful costumes Nourse returned to
Penmarc'h for three consecutive years to paint. Rentrant de
eglise, Penmarc'h was painted
during her first year at
Penmarc'h.
Spring 1983
Elizabeth Nourse
In April 1893 the Nourses returned to Cincinnati because Adelaide was ill with consumption. During
the summer the artist traveled to Chicago for the Columbian
Exposition where her three paintings shown in the Palace of
Fine Arts received a medal. Two of her paintings were also
on loan in the Cincinnati Room of the Woman's Building
at the Fair.
Adelaide died on September 12, 1893. This
left Elizabeth and Louise as the only surviving members of
their immediate family. It was a tragic loss for the artist who
had always felt a special closeness to her twin and from that
time on she apparently decided to make Paris her home. She
and Louise always retained their American citizenship and
maintained a deep interest in their Cincinnati relatives and
friends, but Paris provided an art community second to
none and the Nourses found that they could live with greater
freedom there as single women and also maintain a higher
standard of living. By selling her paintings to Americans,
Nourse benefited from the exchange rate of five francs to the
dollar, and the sisters reported in 1900 that they could live
simply on $ 1,000 a year and, if they had any more, they
Peasant Women of Borst which
seventeen Cincinnati women
had purchased for the Cincinnati
Art Museum hung in the Cincinnati Room of the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago.
considered themselves rich.
Returning to Paris in 18 94, the Nourses found
a studio at 80 rue d'Assas in the Latin Quarter where they
were to live for the rest of their lives. It afforded a splendid
view of the Luxembourg Gardens, and over the years they
were able to sublet it frequently to helpfianancetheir working
trips in search of fresh subject matter for Elizabeth in the
French countryside. Brittany became one of their favorite
painting locales, particularly the remote village of Penmarc'h
where they boarded in a local convent, at a cost of $1.00 a
day each, and made many friends among the villagers.
She received a medal for three
of her paintings shown in
the Palace of Fine Arts at
the Columbian Exposition in
Chicago.
Queen City Heritage
Louise Nourse wrote that the
price for Dans I'eglise a
Volendam was $700 although
she had sold it once for $ 1,000,
the buyer decided it was too
large and exchanged it for two
small pictures priced at
$500 each.
Although there is no record
that Nourse ever consulted
Frank Duveneck, renown Cincinnati artist and teacher, her
painting Old Man and Child
indicated she experimented
with the bravura brushwork of
his early canvases.
The Cincinnati Public Schools
own her Interieur breton,
Plougastel which exhibited at
the New Salon in 1908.
Spring 1983
ft
„
r »^r\
Inscribed "Em Pit," this drawing
of Emerson Pitman, Nourse's
nephew, was given to her niece
in 1929. Both drawings are
part of the Nourse Collection
donated to the Historical
Society by Melrose Pitman.
Nourse made this drawing of
her twin sister when the two
were fourteen and gave it to
Adelaide's daughter, Melrose
Pitman, many years later.
t
•-'
^ . • • • • •
14
Queen City Heritage
In 1897 the Nourses spent three months in
Tunis visiting the Wachman sisters who were living there.
The artist's palette had been brightening for some years, but
the influence of tropical sunshine caused her to use more
vivid colors than she had in the past. Her dramatic portrait,
Head ofan Algerian, illustrated this new interest in rich color.
The Nourses and the Wachmans had another
pair of Cincinnati friends who also became expatriates, Helen
and Mary Rawson, with whom they visited over the years.
In 1901 the Nourses spent some time at the Rawsons'
villa in Menton where Elizabeth sketched their niece, Martha
Rawson at Menton, against the background of the Riviera
coast. It illustrated the bold drawing technique that won
her election to the New Salon board as societaire. Pastel
was her favorite medium for portraiture and, through the
years, she executed many commissions for Parisian friends
and for Americans visiting Paris.
For the Salon Nourse continued to paint
straightforward portraits of ordinary peasants, such as
Normandy Peasant Woman and Child in which she showedaverts her head. As she frequently did, here she emphasized
the child gazing directly at the viewer while the mother the contrast between the mother's weathered hands and the
child's tender skin. Anna Schmidt reported that several
dealers objected to her ugly peasants and asked her to paint
something pretty that would sell. Nourse refused to compromise her belief, however, that there was beauty in the
commonplace and said that she could not paint what did
not appeal to her.
Through the years Nourse was preoccupied
with illustrating light in both her watercolor and oil paintings.
She could capture the fugitive light of sky and water swiftly
in watercolor. In her oils, she experimented with light of
every day and season of the year with artificial light, lamplight
and firelight. A Salon painting, Les violets clos, featuring both
interior and exterior light, became the most important work
of her career when it was purchased in 191 o by the French
ministry of Fine Arts for the state's permanent collection in
the Luxembourg Museum. This official recognition of her
work caused her to be acclaimed by at least forty critics at the
Salon and occasioned much publicity in English and American newspapers as well.
Buoyed by this success, Nourse painted La
reverie for the next Salon, an even bolder experiment with
sunshine flooding a dim interior in which a woman's figure,
composed of vivid shades of blue, green, and violet, is almost
dissolved by the light as in an Impressionist painting. This
work was left in her estate and her executor, Walter S.
Schmidt, donated it and thirty-one other Nourse paintings
to the College-Conservatory of Music (now a part of the
Her dramatic portrait, Head of
an Algerian, illustrated her new
interest in rich color.
Nourse painted straightforward
portraits of ordinary peasants
in which she emphasized the
contrast between the mother's
weathered hands and the child's
tender skin as in Normandy
Peasant Woman and Child
now owned by the Cincinnati
Art Museum.
University of Cincinnati) where he served as chairman of the
board of trustees.
Nourse was at the peak of her career in these
years just prior to World War I. She worked prodigiously to
take advantage of all the requests to exhibit her paintings. In
July 1914, however, the Germans invaded Belgium and the
war marked the end of the art world as Nourse knew it. The
Salon lost its importance as dealers in London, Paris and
New York attracted the public by showing a rapid succession
of modern styles.
Most of the American expatriates in Paris went
home, but the Nourses felt an obligation to their adopted
country, and they remained and worked tirelessly for the
—
.
• ! 9 ° J t h e N o u r s e s spent time
at the Rawsons' villa in Menton
and while there Elizabeth
sketched Martha Rawson at
Menton.
In the early twentieth centu77
Nourse's
- — - . . ww w work
» T V I ix was
vvao reproduced
i ^LJI UUUUc
~ - French
•=
•- picture
-•-*
on
postcards.
refugees who flooded into Paris. Elizabeth solicited donations
from many American and Canadian friends. Anna Schmidt
was particularly active in raising funds for her in Cincinnati,
Boston, and Gloucester. Nourse was especially concerned
with aiding artists whose lives were now disrupted by the
war, and in 1919 the board of the New Salon presented her
with a silver plaque in recognition of this work.
In March 1920 Elizabeth underwent surgery
for breast cancer and was unable to paint at her easel for
some time. She exhibited three works in the Salon of 1921
that had been painted some years previously, and by 1924
she ceased to exhibit at all. She was sixty-five years old and
her professional career had spanned forty-four years.
16
Queen City Heritage
>;•-,..
DISCE-QUASI-SEMPER-VICTURUS--VIVE- QUASI- CRAS-MOR1TVRVS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA, MA
TO A MELTING SNOWFLAKE.
CUNSHINE, th
Has lured you
A guileless thin.g that lr
Wllr
ill ha
icy brea
But languish ere the day.
Albeit happily,
After your bit of play.
MISS ELIZABETH NOURSE,
LAETARE MEDALIST.
W *if PON Miss Elizabeth Nourse, foremost
I
I of the women artists of America,
V J the University of Notre Dame this
year confers the highest honor withm
its power, an honor symbolical of the preeminence of a lay Catholic of America, the
Laetare Medal. Not only on account of her
achievement in her profession but by reason
of her untiring and effective efforts to better
and beautify the lives of others is Miss Nourse
most worthy to be added to the august group
of Laetare Medalists.
Miss Nourse, a descendent of the Rebecca
Nourse family of Salem, Massachusetts, was
In 1921 Nourse received one last public honor
Born with great natural ability, Elizabeth
that must have been gratifyingforher. The University of Nourse received excellent training at the School of Design,
Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, awarded her the Laetare but more than this was neededforher to achieve international
Medal, given annually to a Catholic layperson for distin- prominence at a time when few women artists were taken
guished service to humanity. The Paris edition of the New seriously. She brought to her work a spiritual dimension that
York Herald described the ceremony, presided over by the enabled her to express deep personal convictions about
Papal Nuncio in Paris, and called Nourse "the dean of Amer- beauty and about the importance of the daily life and work
ican woman painters in France and one of the most eminent of ordinary women, whom she portrayed with sympathy
contemporary artists of her sex." The Chicago Tribune simplyand respect. She was a Victorian lady with all the virtues we
referred to her as "the first woman painter of America." associate with them—she was religious, devoted to her famElizabeth was probably not completely happy with such ily, patriotic, and hard working. Yet, she was also independent,
tributes since she once told her friend, Anna Schmidt, that courageous, and determined to make a successful career in a
she wanted to be judged as an artist, not as a woman. She had field where many men failed to earn a living. Her life attests
become accustomed, however, to hearing her work praised to the fact that her dedication was an inspiration to the
for showing "the strength of a man."
numerous women who supported her, publicized her, and
In retirement the Nourses enjoyed visits from admired and purchased her art.
many of their Cincinnati relatives and friends. In 1926 Louise
wrote that so many Cincinnatians visited their studio that
Unless otherwise noted, all information on Nourse is taken from Mary
"Little by little we see the whole town." When Louise died in A l i c e H e e k i n B u r k e , Elizabeth Nourse, 1 8 5 9 - 1 9 3 8 : A Salon Career
1927 at the age of eighty-four, Elizabeth immediately became (Washington, D.C., 1983).
An enlarged version of the exhibition opened for a seven-week showing
ill and was hospitalized. She lingered on for a year and a half, on May 13, 1983, at the Cincinnati Art Musuem.
but after the loss of her sister, she lost all interest in the world William H . Truettner, Introduction to Elizabeth Nourse, 1859-1938, A
around her. She died on October 8, 1938, and was buried Salon Career p p . 12-13.
Kenneth R. Trapp, "Toward a Correct Taste: Women and the Rise of
beside Louise in the parish cemetery in St. Leger, a village the Design Reform Movement in Cincinnati 1947-1880;" Celebrate
forty-five miles southwest of Paris which had been their Cincinnati Art, (Cincinnati, 1982), p. 51.
favorite country retreat. She left the bulk of her estate to her Anita Ellis, "Cincinnati Art Furniture," Antiques, April 1982, p. 931.
four nieces and all of her remaining art work to her executor,
Walter S. Schmidt, a Cincinnati realtor who had managed
her affairs after his father's death in 1911.
1
In 1921 the University of Notre
Dame in South Bend, Indiana
awarded Nourse the Laetare
Medal, given annually to a
Catholic layperson for distinguished service to humanity.