Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau

Wonderful clips on the romance of Gardner and M. Bouguereau

                                       
Gardner House Exeter New Hampshire
Gardner was the first woman to exhibit a painting at the Paris Salon, and the first American woman to be awarded a gold medal by the French Academy. Born: Oct. 4, 1837 Died Jan. 28, 1922 daughter of George Gardner (son of John Gardner and Deborah Dean) was born August 24, 1801 in Exeter, NH, and died August 11, 1857 in Gibralter. He married Jane Lowell on May 11, 1830 in Portland, ME, daughter of Daniel Lowell and Celia Thompson.

John Edward Gardner (son of George Gardner and Jane Lowell) was born January 13, 1835 in Exeter, NH, and died August 21, 1899 in Exeter, NH. He married Miriam Stedman Nightingale on January 13, 1875 in Boston, Mass, daughter of James White Nightingale and Mary Frances Folsom.

Rev. Roland D. Sawyer in the Exeter "News Letter" of 29 Oct. 1953, to be given the honor by critics as being the greatest American woman painter-artist, and placed by the eminent French critic as second to only Rosa Bonheur who he placed first among all women artists. After attending the "Young Ladies' Female Academy" of Miss Mary Beil on Center Street in Exeter, she went to Lasell Seminary at Auburndale, Mass. and graduated in 1856. Much interested in the art courses at Lasell she studied and painted in Boston and soon saw the greater features of European painting and left for Paris. There every Paris Atelier door was closed against her. The one person she admired above all others was Rosa Bonheur, so she determined to follow her heroine. She cut her hair short, got permission from the Paris police to wear the clothes of a youth-male, and then boldly went to the Great Gobelin School of Drawing and Painting across whose threshold never had a female stepped, and not a professor objected to her entrance and taking up the work. In fact, the professors and others of the talented and intellectual circles were somewhat amused and much interested in the "Droll American" and she was given every opportunity to study under the greatest artists. Surely a good fortune. She married the famous French painter Bouguereau, 20 June 1896. "No painter in the world has ever equaled Gardner-Bouguereau tint of skin, covering various childhood ages and in countenance and expression." Her first exhibit in the Paris salon was of Cornelia and her jewels in 1872. A picture of the Madonna is in the Gardner house at 12 Front Street, Exeter and one of the Christ Child with Cherubs is now owned by Elizabeth Bouguereau Gardner Householder in Kalamazoo, Michigan (1970) (Now in Silver City, N.M. with her daughter Mary Fleming. 1986)
June 8, 1896 Boston Post

Elizabeth Jane Gardner – the resolute and tenacious artist.
Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau papers, 1853-1977, bulk 1864-1920
Elizabeth Jane Gardner
Elizabeth Jane Gardner and the American Colony in Paris: “Making Hay while the Sun Shines” in the Business of Art
NEW ADD from Janice Brown New Hampshire’s Most Celebrated Artist: Exeter’s Elizabeth Jane (Gardner) Bouguereau (1837-1922)

Portrait of Elizabeth Gardener Bouguereau by her husband William Bouguereau (1895)

From Bobb Edwards

                                       

Photo from National Museum of Woman in the Arts

                       

Story written by a third grader back in 1915. From {Picture Study} Two MothersTo View more Art: Bouguereau, Elizabeth Jane Gardner 1837-1922
Christie's Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau (American, 1851-1922) Moses in the Bulrushes

Cimetière de Montparnass Paris Île-de-France, Franc Plot: Division 12 Photo Marie Von B.