Elizabeth Nourse

Walter S. Schmidt
George E. Fee (by bequest circa 1956)
Jean M. Fee (by descent from the above, her husband)
George E. Fee III, Hillsboro, Ohio (by descent from the above, his mother, in 1982)
Private Collection, Ohio
Berry-Hill Galleries, New York
Borghi & Co., New York

 

Cincinnati, Taft Museum, MacDowell: the Vital Beginning (in celebration of the Cincinnati MacDowell Society's 70th Anniversary Year), February 12-March 20, 1983, no. D-50

M.A. Heekin Burke, Elizabeth Nourse 1859-1938: A Salon Career,  Cincinnati, 1983, p. 266, no. D-50
Gerald M. Ackerman, American Orientalists, Paris, 1994, p. 151, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This canvas has been lined using wax as an adhesive. The paint layer is stable and has been cleaned and varnished. It seems unlikely that this picture has received any restoration; there are none visible either to the naked eye or under ultraviolet light. There is some very slight abrasion in the dark colors in the lower center which could be corrected if desired, yet the picture could also be hung in its current condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

One of the first American women to be elected a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Nourse won several awards during her lifetime, including the third class medal at the Institut de Carthage, Tunis in 1897, the year this painting was executed.  Her painting Les volets clos was bought by the French government for the Musée du Luxembourg's permanent collection of contemporary art, and hung alongside the works of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent.  Remarkably, given this international renown, Nourse was almost entirely American-trained.

Nourse traveled widely during her career, visiting Algeria and Tunisia with her twin sister in 1897.  Writing to her niece, Nourse complained that she was not able to complete many large oil paintings because her models would not pose for long periods of time; in La Mosquée Sidi-M'harez et la place Bab-Souika, Tunis, Nourse seems to have found a more patient subject (fig. 1).
 
Nourse's fascination with the distinctive light of this 'land of sunshine & flowers' is readily apparent, as is, in the bold formal geometries of the composition, her early study of woodcarving and sculpture.  Impasto strokes of white paint connect the robed Arab figures to the façades of the marketplace and to the magnificent mosque, towering above them. Nourse's population of this cityscape imbues it with an intimacy, a sense of humanity, and a spirit of community that is absent from many contemporary Orientalist works.

According to Mary Alice Burke's catalogue raisonné, this work was listed in the Nourse Scrapbook as a donation to a benefit for prisoners of war in June 1915.