Llnfirmiere resonates when it is looked at against the backdrop of the First World War. Women were working as nurses in unprecedented numbers and Julia Beatrice How she served with the Red Cross. Moreover, the representation of women and children, for which How became known, had a new significance. Some French artists had returned to figuration, taking the mother and child as their subject matter, rejecting modernist experiment in favor of a reassuring celebration of fertility and nurture in the midst of destruction, a move which was later labeled by the writer Jean Cocteau the rappei a i'ordre (the call to order).
How trained at Professor Herkomer's art school, and then in Paris at the Academie Deladuse, Montparnasse. She lived in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, a street with one of the highest concentrations of artists in the city. During regular visits to Holland and Brittany (she set up a studio in Etaples), How drew and painted simple interiors and their inhabitants, in sympathy with a contemporary predilection for Dutch painting. Her palette was soft, but also confident; vivid hues were juxtaposed with tonal passages. The subtle atmosphere of her work led to comparisons with Eugene Carriere and Whistler, while her domestic subject matter had similarities with the intimistes. Her art was highly regarded in France. She was elected a Societaire of the Salon des Beaux-Arts, had solo exhibitions, and her work was bought by the French state (it is now in the Musee d'Orsay). |
