Prominently signed, dated, and inscribed in the lower left, E. J. Gardner/ d'apres P. Delaroche/ Paris 1866., this is a copy Elizabeth Gardner made of Hippolyte (Paul) Delaroche’s Édouard V, roi mineur d'Angleterre, et Richard, duc d'York, son frère puîné (1483), dit Les enfants d'Édouard (Edward V and the Duke of York in the Tower) at the Musée du Luxembourg, where she studied it firsthand in 1866. Painted in 1830, Delaroche's painting was exhibited at the Salon the following year (1831, no. 522) and purchased by the French state (for 6,000 francs); it was immediately hung in the Musée du Luxembourg and subsequently moved to the Louvre in 1874 where it still hangs today.

The subject is probably taken from Shakespeare’s Richard III; specifically act IV, scene iii, in which Edward V (1470-1483), having succeeded the throne following the death of his father, Edward IV, has been deposed by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, who would become Richard III, and cowers here with his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York (1472-1483), in the Tower of London where they would both be murdered. Elizabeth faithfully copies Delaroche’s theatrical composition, from the concerned dog to the Annunciation depicted on the illuminated page of the missal. The theme of innocent children awaiting an uncertain fate was popular among 19th-century painters and there are numerous copies of this painting, which also circulated widely in printed reproductions.

Elizabeth Jane Gardner, an aspiring artist from Exeter, New Hampshire, arrived in Paris in the summer of 1864, at the age of twenty-six, to study art and make a career as a professional artist. Elizabeth was one of several expatriate women artists who arrived in the French capital just before the end of the American Civil War to pursue professional artistic instruction and contend in an art market dominated by–and largely restricted to–men, from training, to exhibiting and selling.

A substantial portion of Elizabeth’s income in these early days came from making copies at the Louvre or Luxembourg museums for orders she received from mostly American collectors traveling abroad. In a letter to her brother John Gardner dated September 19, 1864, Elizabeth describes her demanding schedule with ambition, determined to move beyond copies but for the time being, “working at the Louvre from 7:30 am til 6 at night part of the time, and occasionally when we [referring to Imogene Robinson (c.1824-1908), her traveling companion] have friends here, giving all our time to fun…I have a long programme prepared for the future. We should not have worked so long in the Louvre had we not had orders for pictures. I hope soon to go into a studio to study. I am working early and late, busy with anatomy every evening” (Elizabeth Jane Gardner to John Gardner, September 19, 1864. Archives of American Art).

By November 1864, Elizabeth was earning enough money from copy commissions to undertake private instruction in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Ange Tissier (1814-1876), who had studied with Paul Delaroche. She studied with Tissier until February 1865, when she left to work in a women’s cooperative studio, as she detailed in a letter to her sister, Maria: “ I have just joined a few young ladies who have an independent little studio the other side of the river…I have been there now three weeks, and like it much. We hire our own models, buy our own charbon and do just as we please. It is less expensive than where I was before. We are a merry set, and have a good time together the first three days of the week. By our united energy we have brought about what I have longed for all winter–an evening class. We have bought a splendid lamp to light our models and we work usually four evenings in the week” (Elizabeth Jane Gardner to Maria Gardner, February 13, 1865, Archives of American Art).

As Elizabeth implies, the cooperative provided an alternative to pricey private studio fees and limited instruction available to women artists at the time. The evening class allowed her to sustain a steady source of income during the day, working on copy commissions at the Louvre or Luxembourg museums, and supplement her artistic training at night, sketching from live models.

From 1874 on, and possibly earlier, Elizabeth was a regular presence in William Bouguereau’s studio. The two were secretly engaged in 1879, after the passing of Bouguereau’s first wife, Nelly, in 1877, and married seventeen years later. She remained active the rest of her life, painting alongside her husband until his death in 1905, and died in Paris in 1922.