La Confidence

One of Gardner's most well-known works, "La Confidence" shows a whispered secret between two young peasant girls. The painting was given to the Lucy Cobb Institute, an all-girls school in Athens, Georgia. Hung in the drawing room parlor of the school, the work was beloved in the school's collection and was viewed as having a "moralizing purpose" for the young girls enrolled in the finishing school. In 1991, painter, filmmaker and University of Georgia filmmaker James Herbert appropriated Gardner's painting and several others from the Georgia Museum of Art's collection and reinterpreted the image in the video for Athens band R.E.M.'s song "Low" from the album Out of Time.