Fisher Girl of Picardy

Elizabeth Nourse, born Mount Healthy, OH 1859-died Paris, France 1938 · 1889

In the summer of 1889, Elizabeth Nourse traveled with her sister Louise and their Cincinnati friend Anna Schmidt around northern France. It was a bitterly cold day when Nourse painted this scene, and Anna later wrote: “I was with Elizabeth when she painted that girl on the Etaples Dunes---it was so cold and windy the model used to weep.” The model’s pink cheeks and limbs suggest the discomfort of the blustery coastal air that particular day. (Burke, “The Rediscovery of Elizabeth Nourse,” Queen City Heritage: The Journal of the Cincinnati Historical Society, Spring 1983)