Woman with a Harp

As you might have realised, this month DailyArt belongs to female artists. It couldn't be different today. :) Enjoy our Women's History Month!

Elizabeth Nourse graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and then settled permanently in Paris, the art capital of Europe. In 1895, she took the confident step of accepting an invitation to join the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, an organization of progressive artists. Dissatisfied with the conservatism and entrenched jury system of the official government Salon exhibition, they established the alternative New Salon in which Nourse regularly exhibited.

Nourse's career parallels that of other expatriate artists of the pre-World War I period, but certain aspects of it are unique. With Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux, she was one of the few women painters to achieve international recognition for her work and, like them, faced certain obstacles that a male artist did not encounter. She first had to prove that she was a serious professional because most women painters, now matter how gifted, were considered Sunday painters who would eventually marry or become teachers and fail to produce a significant body of work. To acquire professional status she had to be recognized by the all-male juries of the Salons and international exhibitions and to be favorably reviewed by the art critics, who also were mostly men. As a Victorian lady she could not easily advance her career by forming friendships in these groups, as a male artist could; the social interchange of the café, so much a part of the artistic life of Paris in her day, was denied to her. To compensate for these disadvantages, she always had the total support of her family and of a large network of women friends who admired her work, publicized it, and bought it.

To learn more about this excellent woman artist, read the article Elizabeth Nourse: "Unquestionably The Premier Woman Artiste of America" on @DailyArtMag.