1859 -1938 · American realism in Paris, rural work and motherhood

Working women, mothers, children and modest interiors give Elizabeth Nourse a dignified, solid and deeply human realism.

Elizabeth Nourse was born in 1859 in Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati. She trained at the McMicken School of Design, where she studied drawing, painting, sculpture and applied arts, then worked as an illustrator and portrait painter. In 1887, she moved to Paris with her sister Louise and briefly attended the Académie Julian; her teachers considering her training already accomplished, she almost immediately prepared a work for the Salon. Nourse chose the subjects she knew and respected: rural women, mothers, children, fishermen, seamstresses and modest interiors. She travels to Brittany, Normandy, Picardy, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and North Africa, observing costumes, gestures and living conditions without transforming its models into picturesque types. Its firm composition, its dense material and its earthy palette give each figure monumental dignity. Member of the National Society of Fine Arts, she received numerous international awards and lived exclusively from her art, while supporting her sister. The purchase of the Volets clos by the French State established a career as an independent salon. She remained in Paris until her death in 1938. The purchase of the Volets clos by the French State established a career as an independent salon. She remained in Paris until her death in 1938. The "Elizabeth Nourse" selection notably compared Self-portrait and Breton Interior. His reading favors atmosphere.

Nourse gives the gravity of great painting on a daily basis: a sewing gesture or a mother with her child becomes an affirmation of dignity.