Flower Market at Notre Dame

In Elizabeth Nourse’s watercolor Flower Market at Notre Dame, one of Paris’s monumental buildings looms over the flowers that blanket the ground. Black-clad vendors and customers cluster on the fringes of the market, bounded on the right by the western bank of the Ile de la Cité, an island in the Seine River in the heart of Paris. Notwithstanding the title inscribed on the painting, it shows not the cathedral of Notre Dame but the nearby massive form of La Conciergerie, Paris’s medieval-era prison, next to which an open-air flower market is still held today; the cathedral itself is behind the viewer. In Nourse’s image a lowering gray sky complements the brooding presence of the prison, with its steep roof and sharp turrets, throwing into contrast the bright notes of the blossoms and greenery in the foreground. Sketchy lines of black chalk, seen for example in the building and in the skirt of the bending woman cut off by the bottom edge of the composition, indicate Nourse’s planning of the composition before she began to paint. However, she then applied the fluid medium in thin washes and rapid strokes of saturated color to capture quickly the fleeting scene and her own instantaneous impression.

Nourse was a lifelong resident of Paris. Although much of her artwork concerns the human figure, especially mothers and children pictured indoors, she made landscapes throughout her career, especially in the more informal media of watercolor and drawing. Along with Rue d’Assas, Paris (TF 1999.103) also in the Terra Foundation collection, Flower Market at Notre Dame demonstrates the artist’s growing interest, late in life, in the city around her. In the flower market, Nourse selected an especially popular tourist destination. It is shown from the same viewpoint in contemporary picture postcards and in the works of such painters of tourist views as Frenchman Eugène Galien (1854–1941), suggesting that Nourse may have worked from an existing pictorial model. Like the other watercolor by the artist owned by the Terra Foundation, this work is dedicated to Pearl, whose identity and relationship to the artist have yet to be established. Nonetheless, it appears to have been in Nourse’s possession at her death.

Nourse, who began her artistic career during a revival of watercolor as a serious artistic medium, painted in both watercolor and in oils from the beginning of her career. By the time she made Flower Market at Notre Dame, she had loosened her technique and lightened her range of colors in both media, undoubtedly in response to more recent artistic trends toward stronger, brighter color and more expressive, spontaneous paint application. The colorful outdoor subject, rapid brushwork, and suggestion of fleeting experience captured in this work suggest Nourse’s awareness of the movement known as impressionism, aspects of which were widely accepted by artists of many different temperaments by the early decades of the twentieth century.

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(Re)Presenting Women, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 2001–January 13, 2002.

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, April 1–October 31, 2005. [exh. brochure]

Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, April 1–October 29, 2006. [exh. brochure]

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 35; fig. 20, p. 35 (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 35; fig. 20, p. 35 (black & white).