A Flower Girl [A Peace Offering] , by Alfred Sacheverel[l] Coke (1846-1924). 1883. Oil on canvas. 16 ½ x 14 inches (42.5 x 36 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of Dreweatts Auctions, Newbury.
This painting sold at Dreweatts in 2023 as A Peace Offering, based on an old handwritten label on the back of the frame. I wonder, however, whether this might not actually be the painting A Flower Girl that Coke showed at the Society of British Artists at their exhibition in 1883/84, no. 31. While either title might fit this picture, A Flower Seller would appear to be the more appropriate of the two. It is not impossible, however, that the same picture might have been exhibited at two different venues under different titles, a practice that was a not uncommon at the time. The old label on the back gives Coke's address as Park Road, Haverstock Hill, which was where he was living in 1883/84, so both paintings must date from the same time period. A painting by Coke with the title A Roman Flower Seller sold at Christie's on June 29, 1895, lot 14. This painting had similar, although not exactly the same dimensions, being listed as 18 x 13 1/2 inches. Was this, in fact, again the same painting or did Coke do a series of similarly themed paintings at this time? Unfortunately, A Flower Girl is not mentioned in contemporary reviews by leading periodicals, so the correct title of the painting under discussion cannot be definitively ascertained.
The painting features a young woman flower seller dressed in a simple white and pink striped dress and with her dark hair tied up with dark yellow head scarf. She is holding out a flower in her left hand to a passerby. She is dressed for a Mediterranean climate, likely in Italy or Greece, and sitting against the white wall of a house on a street paved with flagstones. Many varieties of flowers can be seen in pots to her left and right, including white daisies, a large arum lily, with red geraniums to the right and various colours of peonies and red oriental poppies to the left. In the right midground are a series of red-figure pottery jars in the style of ancient Greek pottery. These attic red-figure vases were exported throughout Greece and beyond. Further examples of ancient Greek pottery, one made using a white-ground technique, can be seen on a window ledge next to the curtain providing some shade to the flowers. Coke could easily have seen examples of ancient Greek pottery at the British Museum. The sea can be seen through an arched doorway in the background.
Genre paintings are unusual in Coke's oeuvre, which generally features classical, historical, or religious works. This painting is remarkably similar to works of this period by John William Waterhouse, as his A Flower Stall [A Grecian Flower Market] of 1880, A Bye-way in Old Rome of 1884, and A Flower Market, Old Rome of 1886. In the latter painting the young woman in the foreground, the focus of the painting, wears a similar stripped dress and her hair is tied up in a similar fashion (Hobson, fig. 4). Waterhouse, of course, had been born in Rome and returned to Italy many times throughout his career but it is not known whether Coke ever visited this area. It is possible Coke was just influenced by paintings by Waterhouse he had seen exhibited and admired.
Bibliography
Catalogue of The Collection of Modern Pictures & Drawings of Sir Robert Palmer Harding and J. C. B. Stevenson Esq. and Important Pictures from Different Sources. London: Christie's (June 29, 1895): lot 14, 5.
Hobson, Anthony. J. W. Waterhouse. Oxford: Phaidon Christie's, 1989. See fig.3, 10 and fig. 4, 13.
Old Master, British and European Art. Newbury: Dreweatts (2 March 2023): lot 96.
Created 17 June 2025