One of the first American women artists to break the female barrier at the Academie Julian* in Paris, Elizabeth Bouguereau is credited with opening the French ateliers to females. She was also the first American woman to exhibit and also to win a medal at the Paris Salon*. Ironically she spent most of her career painting in the style of her husband and mentor, French academician William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). She also stopped painting during her married years, 1896 to 1905, but after that produced at least four major paintings a year until she was disabled by rheumatism.

Elizabeth Bouguereau was noted for her idealized, allegorical figure and genre subjects in a smoothly modeled style that reminded some vi...