The Flower Girl

Charles Cromwell Ingham

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Irish-born Ingham was familiar with European depictions of street vendors hawking their wares. The choice of a flower girl as a subject for this work—rather than, for example, a newsboy—reveals the artist’s preference for female models and his passion for painting clearly identifiable flowers with chromatic lushness. The young woman’s plain dress and head covering contrast with her basket holding nearly twenty intensely colored flowers. In her right hand, she offers a potted fuchsia in a gesture emblematic of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers. The plant itself is symbolic of love.

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