The Flower Girl

This is the painting that I'm trying to write a paper on right now, and it is proving to be quite frustrating! At the same time, I'm writing a paper on three of the places I visited on my trip last week. That paper is done, I think, but I continue to revise until the moment I have to print it out and turn it in. I'm the same way with painting--I don't think I've ever actually completed a painting, because I constantly feel like there's something that can be improved.

Anyway, "The Flower Girl" is by a man named Charles Cromwell Ingham, who came to America from Ireland in the early 19th century and set up business as a portrait painter in New York. He was quite successful because he developed a highly original and distinctive technique of layering glazes to create an ethereal, romantic quality to his paintings. When you see "The Flower Girl" in real life, it's incredible detail is heightened by these glazes, which give the hyper-realistic flowers an eerie three-dimensional appearance.

I'm not usually attracted to such saccharine images of girls in art, but I had to choose something from what is currently on display at the Met. After wandering around for about an hour, half toying with and half frightened by the idea of writing about the huge Trumbull battle scene, something led me to the Ingham. Then, I think the technicolor flowers hypnotized me.

Nobody is really sure who The Flower Girl is--she is commonly referred to as a "fancy painting" or genre scene--a type of artwork still relatively new in American during the 1840s, but gaining in popularity. As art-collecting gained respectability and popularity, people needed something to collect besides just portraits of their family. So they borrowed on the European tradition of painting landscapes, anonymous people at work, scenes of everyday life, still-lives, and trompe l'oiel (did I spell that right?) scenes. And who doesn't love a painting of a pretty girl with flowers?

Some people say that The Flower Girl is selling more than just flowers, but I tend to disagree. Like I said, nobody really knows for sure what the artist intended by this piece. so its open to interpretation. I think she's respectable, because she is wearing a black hood, which is in my view a symbol of mourning and purity in the covering of the hair. Her mouth is closed demurely, and there is no overtly sexual aspect to her dress. Everything is simple and plain except the flowers, which dominate the piece with their intense color and meticulous depiction. Next in intensity are the girls blue eyes, which stare out hauntingly. With one hand she proffers a potted fuchsia plant, a symbol of affection.

She's a mystery, and a study in contrasts. I have a lot to write about, but its more fun to write about it in my blog, where I'm not graded, than in my paper!