The Flower Girl

James Jebusa Shannon (1862-1923)

Oil on canvas

1900

Support: 838 × 660 mm; frame: 1090 × 1110 × 150 mm

Collection: Tate Gallery, London

Chantrey Purchase from the artist,1901

Sharing some characteristics (foliage and play of light) with Shannon's later Flora, this emphasises the close bond between nursing mother and baby, and the care lavished on the baby, with her pretty lacy bonnet with its (or perhaps the dress's) pink ribbon. [Click on the image to enlarge it; commentary continues below]

Image kindly made available on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. Commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee and Shirley Nicholson.

The painting came about in the following way:

On the sea front at Eastbourne there were flower girls. They were an institution, almost as much so as the flower girls at Piccadilly Circus who sit around Eros. One girl was very paintable and had the most divine baby. We used to see her every morning on our way down to bathe. At last my father could bear it no longer and asked her if she would sit for him, to which she consented. My father, remembering the girl from the fruit shop, said: ‘Come exactly as you are, baby, basket of flowers, the white blouse with the big black spots and old battered straw hat.” The picture made a sensation at the Academy and was bought by the Chantrey Bequest. It now hangs in the Tate Gallery. [Shannon 104]

Bibliography

Shannon, Kitty. For my children. London: Hutchinson, 1933.

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Created 16 December 2021