Elizabeth Jane Gardner was among the first wave of Americans who sought art training in Paris after the Civil War. Gardner's paintings were accepted into 25 of the Paris Salons and at the Exposition Universelle, where she won a bronze medal in 1889.

Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, and educated at the Lasell Female Seminary, Gardner received the minimal training in the arts typical of well-bred women. However, Gardner decided to join the artistic migration to Paris in 1864 to study contemporary and old-master paintings.

While Paris beckoned all artists, women were barred from studying at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Undaunted by such discrimination, Gardner enrolled in private classes. In 1868 she had her first success at the Salon, where the judges chose two of her paintings. Gardner commented that such recognition gave her "a position among foreign artists and raises the value of what I paint," demonstrating her determination not only to be a painter but also to be a competitive artist whose works would fetch a good price.(1) In 1877 she began her tutelage with William-Adolphe Bouguereau, whose portrayals of children, mythological, and domestic scenes met with wide public acclaim.

Religious, historical, and mythological subject matter dominated Gardner's oeuvre in the early part of her career. She acknowledged that her work was strongly influenced by Bouguereau, to whom she became engaged in 1879 but did not marry until 1896. As an ambitious painter, she made her own way by producing works in a monumental style and of a subject matter that was most often associated with male artists. As a late-19th-century woman artist engaged to a better-established painter, Gardner also stands out for her stated desire to maintain her freedom to attain the success for which she strived.

(1) Quoted in Fidell-Beaufort, "Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau: A Parisian Artist from New Hampshire," Archives of American Art Journal 24 (1984), 2-3.