ELIZABETH NOURSE
(American, 1859-1938)
MOTHER AND CHILD
16.5 x 13 Inches
Oil on Canvas
Signed Lower Left ‘E. Nourse’
Provenance: Jaray Collection, Colorado

This eminent Cincinnati artist first attended the Cincinnati School of Design before moving to Paris where she studied with Boulanger and Lefebre at the Academie Julian. A full member of the Société Nacionale des Beaux Arts from 1901, Nourse exhibited with great success both at the Paris Salon from 1883 and at London’s Royal Academy from 1889. She is particularly appreciated for her intimate scenes of rural women engaged in domestic or farm labor and for her portraits of mothers with children and she approaches these subjects with a rigorous and unsentimental sympathy uncharacteristic of her period. This quality, combined with her lyrical brushwork and her ability to convey an almost devotional spiritual intensity, has ensured the ascendancy of her reputation over the last fifty years. We are pleased to offer an exceptional example of Elizabeth Nourse's work that clearly exemplifies the artist's remarkable talent.

Reference:

Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Vol. X, p.284; Kunstlexicon, Thieme-Becker, Vol. XXV, p.527; Who Was Who in American Art, Falk, Vol. II, p.2442; Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, Mantle Fielding, p.689; Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Creps, Vol. II, p.1021; Davenport’s Art Reference Guide, 2003/4 Edition, p.1513; et al.