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Lot Essay
The Flower Seller is a brooding, evocative painting that juxtaposes nature and bustling urban life. It is firmly rooted in New York while paying homage to Childe Hassam’s New England and Parisian artistic influences.
The welcoming glow of a shop window illuminates bright, fresh flowers for sale against the backdrop of a rainy New York City night. A flower merchant, holding a bouquet, stands beside his outdoor flower stand while a woman with a black umbrella and her loosely rendered companion stride near him on the sidewalk. The figures are anonymous with faces partially obscured; the flowers take center stage and draw the eye. Delicate yellow and pink petals and vibrant green stems, created from confident short strokes and thick impasto offer bright, energetic relief from the subdued evening fashioned in long white, blue, grey, and black brush marks that evoke a shimmering wet sidewalk and waterlogged clothing.
A master of depicting rainy scenes by this stage of his career, Hassam deftly uses impressionistic brushstrokes and patterns. The bright vertical strokes of the flower cart’s reflections stand apart from the shorter horizontals depicting the figures’ shadows and glistening water. The woman’s black umbrella punctuates and reinforces the dreary weather.
Rain-covered cityscapes and figures with umbrellas play an important role in Hassam’s art, and he tackled the theme repeatedly as he travelled and developed his artistic skills. He began painting the subject during his early career in Massachusetts, as seen in Rainy Day, Boston, 1885 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio). In 1886, he moved to Paris, and his first Paris Salon acceptance, 1887’s Cab Station, Rue Bonaparte (Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago), was a continued exploration of the theme in a Parisian context. In 1889, Hassam and his family moved to New York. Once there, his rainy imagery incorporated ideas he had encountered while abroad placed in a Manhattan context. The visible brushwork on the paving in the present work, highlighting water in glistening strips rather than attempted verisimilitude, shows the influence of French impressionism on his art.
While in Paris, Hassam began to create images of flower markets and sellers. His first paintings of the subject began in 1888 and the artist quickly incorporated the imagery into evocative scenes of the urban landscape. Paintings like the present work, and before it c. 1888’s Rue Montmartre, Paris [KP1] (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond), reveal flower stalls alongside anonymous figures with obscured faces. The bright, colorful flowers are vibrant, energetic counterpoints to neutral faceless figures. These paintings reveal a series of contrasts, of natural beauty alongside the confines of cityscapes.
Hassam romanticized the urban experience, capturing the transient beauty of street scenes. The idea of ephemerality was also central to his process. “Sometimes I stop painting a tree or building to sketch a figure or group that interests me, and which must be caught on the instant or it is gone” (quoted in Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, exh. cat., Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York, 1999, p. 76). The Flower Seller depicts a specific moment in time. Hassam painted the year and location “New York 1894 / SE corner 23rd St and 5th Ave” on the reverse of the panel. This intersection is now the site of the iconic Flatiron building, which was built in 1901-1902. At the time, however, it was a series of low-rise buildings housing The Cumberland apartments and various commercial spaces. Having lived in the Chelsea Hotel (two blocks away) prior to 1893, Hassam was well aware of this neighborhood, its vendors and the “feel” of the location. Indeed, he revisited the junction frequently in his paintings, including View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, 1890 (Sold, Sotheby’s, New York, 15 May 2024), and Spring Morning in the Heart of the City, 1890-1899 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which depicts Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. These paintings form a chronicle of the area, revealing scenes and episodes through the eyes of the artist as flaneur.
Flower markets are a subject first explored in the artist’s Parisian work, and the rainy setting gained importance to the artist from his earliest Boston works onward. This painting depicts a location just blocks from Hassam’s New York apartment and on the site of one of New York’s subsequent iconic buildings. The Flower Seller is a wonderful marriage of Boston, Paris and New York in Childe Hassam’s oeuvre.
The welcoming glow of a shop window illuminates bright, fresh flowers for sale against the backdrop of a rainy New York City night. A flower merchant, holding a bouquet, stands beside his outdoor flower stand while a woman with a black umbrella and her loosely rendered companion stride near him on the sidewalk. The figures are anonymous with faces partially obscured; the flowers take center stage and draw the eye. Delicate yellow and pink petals and vibrant green stems, created from confident short strokes and thick impasto offer bright, energetic relief from the subdued evening fashioned in long white, blue, grey, and black brush marks that evoke a shimmering wet sidewalk and waterlogged clothing.
A master of depicting rainy scenes by this stage of his career, Hassam deftly uses impressionistic brushstrokes and patterns. The bright vertical strokes of the flower cart’s reflections stand apart from the shorter horizontals depicting the figures’ shadows and glistening water. The woman’s black umbrella punctuates and reinforces the dreary weather.
Rain-covered cityscapes and figures with umbrellas play an important role in Hassam’s art, and he tackled the theme repeatedly as he travelled and developed his artistic skills. He began painting the subject during his early career in Massachusetts, as seen in Rainy Day, Boston, 1885 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio). In 1886, he moved to Paris, and his first Paris Salon acceptance, 1887’s Cab Station, Rue Bonaparte (Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago), was a continued exploration of the theme in a Parisian context. In 1889, Hassam and his family moved to New York. Once there, his rainy imagery incorporated ideas he had encountered while abroad placed in a Manhattan context. The visible brushwork on the paving in the present work, highlighting water in glistening strips rather than attempted verisimilitude, shows the influence of French impressionism on his art.
While in Paris, Hassam began to create images of flower markets and sellers. His first paintings of the subject began in 1888 and the artist quickly incorporated the imagery into evocative scenes of the urban landscape. Paintings like the present work, and before it c. 1888’s Rue Montmartre, Paris [KP1] (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond), reveal flower stalls alongside anonymous figures with obscured faces. The bright, colorful flowers are vibrant, energetic counterpoints to neutral faceless figures. These paintings reveal a series of contrasts, of natural beauty alongside the confines of cityscapes.
Hassam romanticized the urban experience, capturing the transient beauty of street scenes. The idea of ephemerality was also central to his process. “Sometimes I stop painting a tree or building to sketch a figure or group that interests me, and which must be caught on the instant or it is gone” (quoted in Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, exh. cat., Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York, 1999, p. 76). The Flower Seller depicts a specific moment in time. Hassam painted the year and location “New York 1894 / SE corner 23rd St and 5th Ave” on the reverse of the panel. This intersection is now the site of the iconic Flatiron building, which was built in 1901-1902. At the time, however, it was a series of low-rise buildings housing The Cumberland apartments and various commercial spaces. Having lived in the Chelsea Hotel (two blocks away) prior to 1893, Hassam was well aware of this neighborhood, its vendors and the “feel” of the location. Indeed, he revisited the junction frequently in his paintings, including View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, 1890 (Sold, Sotheby’s, New York, 15 May 2024), and Spring Morning in the Heart of the City, 1890-1899 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which depicts Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. These paintings form a chronicle of the area, revealing scenes and episodes through the eyes of the artist as flaneur.
Flower markets are a subject first explored in the artist’s Parisian work, and the rainy setting gained importance to the artist from his earliest Boston works onward. This painting depicts a location just blocks from Hassam’s New York apartment and on the site of one of New York’s subsequent iconic buildings. The Flower Seller is a wonderful marriage of Boston, Paris and New York in Childe Hassam’s oeuvre.