Covent Garden Flower Women
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Covent Garden Flower Women is a 1877 by John Thomson, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see two women in a London street, one holding a baby, the other clutching a basket of violets. These women sold flowers for pennies, often passing the job down through families. The painting shows the quiet dignity in their tired faces and patched clothes. It’s not staged—it’s how they actually stood, day after day. To see more scenes like this, look up england, 19th century.
Thomson’s collaborator, reporter Adolphe Smith said that “The familiar sight of a poor woman holding a pale child in her arms and offering modest violets to the pedestrian, is pregnant with a poetry which rags, and dirt fail to obliterate.” The jobs, which were passed down between generations, required worked long hours and yielded a meager income.
These are the real-life counterparts of Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady , who started out selling flowers in Covent Garden.
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Thomson painted Scottish landscapes in oil, focusing on the rugged terrain around the Trossachs and Selkirkshire.
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
