Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau (American, 1837–1922)
Ploughing in the Nivernais (also called The First Dressing), 1868
Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 51 in.
Signed and inscribed lower right: E.J. Gardner/Rosa Bonheur/Paris 1868
2014.1

One of the first American women to study art in Paris, Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau funded her training by initially making portraits and copies of famous paintings at the Louvre and Luxembourg Museums. Copying works by established artists was a common practice for the student, and this is an especially appropriate painting for the young American to select. A great admirer of Rosa Bonheur—who became her friend and mentor—Gardner aspired to improve her skill at painting animals, revealing to her biographer, Theodore Stanton: “I realized that the animals in my compositions were very inferior to Rosa Bonheur’s.”

Before entering the Académie Julian in 1873 and becoming William Adolphe Bouguereau’s student and eventually his wife, she studied with various prominent faculty members. This canvas, painted during her time of study with the great animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye at the Paris Botanical Gardens and Zoo, is a copy of Bonheur’s acclaimed Realist painting Ploughing in the Nivernais (also called The First Dressing), commissioned by the French state in 1848 and displayed at the Luxembourg Museum (now in the Musée d’Orsay). During her 58-year career in Paris, Gardner exhibited her work at the Paris Salon and became the first and only American woman to win a medal.