Elizabeth Nourse began studying art at the McMiken School of Design which later became the Art Academy of the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1887, she travelled to Paris with her older sister Louise, where she studied for three months with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Académie Julian. She exhibited La Mère at the Paris Salon in 1888. She later travelled to Russia, other parts of western Europe and North Africa. She is best known for her depictions of French working class people, especially women and children.

Group Exhibitions

2006, Americans in Paris 1860-1900, National Gallery, London (also presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Chicago (Terra Foundation for American Art Collection): Le Baiser (1922, pastel and charcoal on paper mounted on board); Flower Market at Notre Dame (1927, watercolour and gouache over black chalk); Rue d'Assas, Paris (1929, gouache and watercolour, with black chalk and black conté crayon)

Cincinnati (AM): Peasant Women of Borst (1891, oil on canvas); La mère (The Mother) (oil on canvas, 1888); Moorish Boy (1897, oil on canvas)

Cincinnati (University of Cincinnati Fine Arts Collection): La Reverie (Les Poissons Rouges) (c. 1910, oil on canvas); Study for La Mère (c. 1893, pastel)

Detroit (IA): Happy Days (1905, oil on canvas)

New Britain (Museum of American Art): Moorish Prince (1897, oil on canvas)