Little Girl with Flowers (Amelia Palmer)

Charles Cromwell Ingham

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1830, Ingham's "Portrait of a Little Girl with Flowers" attracted critical scorn for its crisp handling, smooth modeling, and bright light on the figure—the very tenets of contemporary neoclassicism. An Irish painter who must have studied in Paris before coming to New York, Ingham espoused the French neoclassical ideal while others clung to the popular, painterly British model. For this avant-garde portrait, Ingham found a willing subject in Amelia Palmer (1819–1843), the daughter of a Stonington, Connecticut, merchant. The idyllic setting and her sprite-like pose suggests that the artist aimed his artistic ambitions higher than straightforward portraiture. The wildflowers—cotton grass, bull thistles, phlox, violets, silkweeds, milkworts, and pinks—redouble the notion of the girl as classical wood nymph, a fair maiden who guards the place she inhabits.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art