4 facts about Elizabeth Jane Gardner

Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau (October 4, 1837 – January 28, 1922) was an American academic and salon painter, who was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. She was an American expatriate who died in Paris where she had lived most of her life. She studied in Paris under the symbolic painter Hugues Merle (1823–1881), the renowned salon painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911), and finally under William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905). After Bouguereau’s wife died, Gardner became his paramour and after the death of his mother, who caustically opposed the union, she married him in 1896. She adopted his subjects, compositions, and even his smooth facture, channeling his style therefore successfully that some of her bill might be mistaken for his. In fact, she was quoted as saying, “I know I am censured for not more audaciously asserting my individuality, but I would rather be known as the best imitator of Bouguereau than be nobody!”

Gardner’s best known work may be The Shepherd David Triumphant (1895), which shows the young person shepherd bearing in mind the lamb he has rescued. Among her other works were Cinderella, Cornelia and Her Jewels, Corinne, Fortune Teller, Maud Muller, Daphne and Chloe, Ruth and Naomi, The Farmer’s Daughter, The Breton Wedding, and some portraits.