ELIZABETH JANE GARDNER BOUGUEREAU AMERICAN 1837 - 1922 THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER signed Elizabeth Gardner (lower right) oil on canvas 67 by 38 3/8 in. 170.1 by 97.4 cm
Theodore Child, "Salon Honors," The Art Amateur, 1887, v. 17, no. 2, p. 28 William Walton, Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'Exposition Universelle de Paris, 1889, Philadelphia, 1889, vol. I, p. 8, illustrated Boston Sunday Journal, July 13, 1902, n.p., illustrated Annette Blaugrund, Paris 1889, American Artists at the Universal Exposition, exh. cat., Philadelphia and New York, 1989, p. 277, illustrated p. 55 (a photograph of the work as hung in the Main "Expatriate" Gallery, United States Section, Exposition Universelle), p. 277 (an engraving of the painting) Charles Pearo, "Elizabeth Jane Gardner, The Best Imitator of Bouguereau," In the Studios of Paris, William Bouguereau & His American Students, exh. cat., Tulsa, 2006, p. 59, illustrated p. 61, fig. 1 (a photograph of the painting) Charles Pearo, "Elizabeth Jane Gardner and the American Colony in Paris, 'Making Hay while the Sun Shines' in the Business of Art," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 42, no. 4, 2009, p. 310, illustrated
Provenance
Albert E. Nettleton, Syracuse, New York (possibly acquired circa 1900) Alice E. Nettleton, Syracuse, New York (by descent from the above, her father) By descent from the above
Notes
Elizabeth Jane Gardner, an aspiring artist from Exeter, New Hampshire, arrived in Paris in 1864 where she supported herself initially as a copyist, selling copies of popular paintings to American travelers and residents in Paris. Progressively, she began painting original works of art and, in 1868, she became one of the first American women to exhibit at the Paris Salon.
Gardner continued to exhibit regularly for almost thirty more years until her marriage to William Bouguereau (see lots 63 and 66) in 1896. After Bouguereau's death, she resumed Salon exhibitions until 1914, culminating in one of the longest (fifty-eight years) and most successful expatriate careers in the French capital.
In 1887, at the age of fifty, Elizabeth Gardner had the distinction of becoming the first and only American woman to ever receive a medal (third class) at the Paris Salon. The painting that earned her such a distinguished position among expatriate and French artists was The Farmer's Daughter. This work is indeed a landmark painting in the history of American and French art, because it documents the long and arduous efforts of women painters like Gardner who aspired to professional careers within the male-dominated exhibition and training sites of mid-nineteenth-century France.
As early as 1877, the artist was turning down orders from dealers to devote more time to her Salon submissions, "I must work to get a medal in Paris and not for money a while longer. All will come right in time I am confident if I work hard and am patient" (Elizabeth Gardner to John Gardner, December 2, 1887). A year later she wrote to her sister Maria, "I am bound to get a medal some year" (Elizabeth Gardner to Maria Gardner, January 10, 1878). Then it came:
"My pictures at this year's Salon have just received the medal which I have waited for so many years. I hasten to write you by the first mail for I know you will All sympathize with me in my happiness. The jury voted me the honor by a very flattering majority - 30 voices out of 40 ....No American woman has ever received a medal here before. You will perhaps think I attach more importance than is reasonable to so small a thing, but it makes such a difference in my position here, all the difference between that of an officer and a private, and I hope it will be a good thing for the sale of my paintings. I made an extravagant risk in my large one this year. Monsieur Bouguereau is very happy at my success. He is as usual President of the Jury, it is his great impartiality which has so long kept him in office. He has always said that I must succeed through my own merit and not by his influence. I hope to send some photos soon....I have nearly a hundred letters of congratulation and dispatches to acknowledge today. I have begun by the dear ones at home" (Elizabeth Gardner to John Gardner, May 30, 1887).
One contemporary source describes how the artist came to paint this scene: "one afternoon, when Miss Gardner was on a sketching excursion, she was overtaken by rain and was forced to seek shelter in a barn. While there, she saw the "farmer's daughter" feeding her fowls, and was so struck with the picturesqueness of the scene that she made a drawing from which grew her prize picture" (Undated newspaper article, Elizabeth Gardner Family Archives).
The Farmer's Daughter would bring further fame to the artist in 1889. The painting was hung in the Main ("Expatriate") Gallery of the United States Section of Paris' Exposition Universelle together with Gardner's Too Imprudent (no. 1886, sold in these rooms, April 18, 2007, lot 96). As illustrated in a contemporary photograph, The Farmer's Daughter was hung in a prime position to the left of the gallery's doorway, held in an elaborate frame of foliate and flower carving which remains with the work today (fig 1.). Considered against works by some of the greatest names in American painting such as William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins and John Singer Sargent, Gardner's submissions to the Exposition Universelle earned her the bronze medal.
Gardner's idealized vignettes depicting the uncorrupted values of nature and rural living contrasted sharply with the emerging Impressionists' depictions of city scenes, leisure and public entertainment. They evoked a bygone era, devoid of ugliness and the fast-paced transformations of a modern world. Such works appealed to a number of prominent American collectors, many of them newly wealthy leaders of industry, like Albert E. Nettleton of Syracuse, New York, the first documented owner of The Farmer's Daughter. The A. E. Nettelton Company, a shoe manufacturer founded in 1879, employed over 600 workers a decade later and became distinguished for the quality of materials and innovation in design. While it has yet to be determined precisely when and from what source Nettleton acquired The Farmer's Daughter, he often traveled to Europe, and likely would have been exposed to Gardner's work through exhibition, her art dealer -- or simply by association with William Bouguereau, whose work was held in nearly every prominent American collection of the late nineteenth century. Since entering Nettleton's collection, The Farmer's Daughter has been known only by contemporary photographs and engravings. Its exhibition at Sotheby's New York will be its first public viewing in well over a century.
