Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau
We present today's painting thanks to the Georgia Museum of Art. :)
The title of this painting means “the secret” in French and most likely refers to the letter one of the young girls holds. Gardner uses symbols to convey themes of privacy, purity, and trust. The unbroken pitcher and the girls’ crossed legs represent feminine modesty. The stone fountain and the cross behind them stand for moral cleanliness. This painting once hung in the Lucy Cobb Institute, a girls’ school in Athens, Georgia (USA), where it was intended to inspire and instruct the students. Mildred Rutherford, one of the loudest voices in promoting the racist “Lost Cause” mythology following the Civil War, was the school’s president at the time, and the overlap between systemic racism and ideas of feminine purity is important to note.
Gardner was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, but lived in Paris most of her life. She studied under and later married William-Adolphe Bouguereau, whose works are similar in style and subject to hers (but not always, you can check it here).
In 1991, James Herbert (painter, filmmaker, and University of Georgia alum), appropriated Gardner’s painting and several others from the Georgia Museum of Art’s collection and reinterpreted the image in the video for the Athens band R.E.M.’s song “Low” from the album “Out of Time.”