Good Friday (Vendredi Saint)

Elizabeth Nourse is appreciated for her empathetic depictions of everyday rural life. She often focused on European peasant women taking care of children. Born in Mount Healthy, Cincinnati, she was a twin in a Catholic family of ten. At age fifteen, Nourse attended the McMicken School of Design and after graduation was offered a teaching position there which she declined. After a brief stint at the Art Students League of New York, Nourse and her sister Louise left for Paris in 1887. She enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, studying under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. But after three months, they informed her she had already learned how to paint quite well and could offer her no further instruction! Aside from occasional travel, she and her sister Louise remained in Paris throughout her life. She never married, and for over 55 years earned a living as a professional artist who also provided for her sister.

Good Friday was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and received a Bronze Medal. The scene was inspired by a visit to Assisi, Italy, during Good Friday observances. The painting is infused with tendencies from Italian Baroque art (dramatic lighting, brown tones), which she would have witnessed during her time in Rome. In the painting, worshippers dressed in traditional village clothing show their piety and participation in Good Friday ritual. One older woman kneels on the floor, kissing a crucifix. This is one of Nourse’s few religious works, surprising for a woman who was a lay member of the Third Order of St. Francis. She did not have to wait for posthumous fame, as in 1893 the Cincinnati Art Museum mounted a solo exhibition of her work and in 1895 she was named a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, an extraordinary honor for a woman.

When World War I broke out, and the Germans advanced into France in 1914, many American expatriates fled. She and Louise remained out of loyalty to their adopted country. The sisters worked on behalf of the refugees who flooded into Paris, collecting food, clothing, and coal. In 1920 she underwent an operation for breast cancer and lived another eighteen years.