Artwork
Hot Corn Seller
Hot Corn Seller is an oil painting by the American Folk Art artist William P. Chappel. It dates from 1874 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
As a genre scene, the painting captures a slice of daily life, documenting the presence of street vendors and the architectural context of the era.
William P. Chappel's 1874 oil painting Hot Corn Seller presents a genre scene set within an urban landscape. The composition depicts a city environment featuring a road, a house, and a carriage, populated by a man and a woman. While the title identifies the central figure as a vendor of hot corn, the visual elements focus on the interaction between these figures against the backdrop of a nineteenth-century American street.
As a genre scene, the painting captures a slice of daily life, documenting the presence of street vendors and the architectural context of the era.
Technique & Style
Hot Corn Seller is executed in oil on slate paper, an unconventional support that distinguishes it from more traditional canvas or panel grounds. The work measures 15.6 by 23.3 centimetres, a modest scale suited to its intimate genre subject. Its classification within The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art situates the piece among the museum's holdings of nineteenth-century American painting.
The slate-paper support lends the surface a smooth, slightly absorbent quality, influencing how the oil medium was handled. The painting depicts an urban street scene populated by figures, carriages, houses, and roadways, rendered in a genre style consistent with Chappel's documented body of work.
History & Provenance
Hot Corn Seller is an 1874 oil-on-slate-paper genre scene by William P. Chappel. The work, classified within The American Wing, depicts a carriage, an urban landscape, a house, a man, a road, and a woman, and measures 15.6 by 23.3 cm. It is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it is catalogued with the accession number 1975.1.240. No specific commission is documented; its provenance consists of creation by Chappel followed by acquisition by the museum. No exhibition history beyond its current institutional holding is recorded.
Legacy
William P. Chappel's 1874 oil on slate paper, Hot Corn Seller, entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing and is catalogued as a genre scene. Its depiction of a bustling urban street with a carriage, house, and figures has made it a reference point for studies of 19th-century American city life.
Overview
Alonzo Chappel's "Hot Corn Seller" captures a vibrant street scene from 1870s New York City. The painting features a woman offering steaming corn cobs, set against a backdrop of brick buildings, chatting men in top hats, and a horse-drawn wagon. This work, executed in oil on slate paper, provides a valuable and relatively uncommon visual record of the daily life and ordinary interactions that characterized the bustling urban environment of the period.
Artist & collection
