Beschreibung:

Artist: William John Hennessy (1839-1917) British Title: The Flower Seller (1874) Signature: signed lower right and dated 1874 Medium: oil on canvas Size: 122 x 91½cm (48 x 36in) Framed Size: 132.5 x 102.6cm (52.2 x 40.4in) Provenance: Christie's, London, The Irish Sale, 22 May 1998, Lot 99; Collection of Ronnie Wood; Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} Wearing a long green skirt and white smock, her dark hair partly covered by a colourful scarf, a flower-seller sits on a stone bench, holding a flower-probably a white phlox. On the bench beside her lie primroses, while at her feet is a basket of chrysanthemums and phlox. The flower seller's soulful... Read more Wearing a long green skirt and white smock, her dark hair partly covered by a colourful scarf, a flower-seller sits on a stone bench, holding a flower-probably a white phlox. On the bench beside her lie primroses, while at her feet is a basket of chrysanthemums and phlox. The flower seller's soulful expression invests the painting with a sentimental appeal, one heightened by the flowers, and the humble street setting. Hennessy's paintings generally depict women and children in idyllic garden, woodland or seaside settings. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, and by Japanese art, his work is literal and representational, with a strong narrative quality, but has also a strong decorative and sentimental appeal. Sometimes, as with paintings such as 'The Flower-Seller' and 'The Shrimpers', Hennessy represented women at work, but more often they are depicted at leisure, in conversation, or gazing out to sea. Although born in the same year as Cezanne, throughout his career Hennessy adhered to the aesthetic and style developed by the Barbizon painters in the 1840's, his work not dissimilar to that of Walter Osborne, Joseph Malachy Kavanagh and Frank O'Meara Born in Thomastown Co. Kilkenny in 1839, when he just ten years old, William John Hennessy, along with his mother and sister, joined their father John, who had fled to New York city because of his involvement with the Young Ireland movement. Growing up in Manhattan, in 1854, Hennessy enrolled in the National Academy of Design. Three years later, while living at 87 Franklin St, he showed his first work at the Academy, and in 1863 became a member. Around 1868, he married Charlotte Mather, from New Haven, and in 1870 the couple moved to London, where he became a member of the Royal Institute. He also showed at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. In 1877, at the Royal Academy, he showed 'Notre Dame des Flots', a painting depicting a woman and child in a Breton church, and the following year was represented by 'Summer Evening by the Thames', depicting two bathers on the river bank. Hennessy's 1879 'The Pride of Dijon' depicts a couple in earnest conversation, on a terrace above a garden. He also exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; between 1879 and 1907 showing eight paintings there. In 1883, at the Grosvenor Gallery he showed 'With the Birds', another of the decorative paintings of women in woodlands, for which he was well-known. There is also a strong narrative quality in most of Hennessy's paintings, as in 'The Return from School', where two children fight by the roadside, watched dispassionately by their class mates. His 'Twixt Day and Night', a painting reminiscent of the work of Frank O'Meara depicts a young woman and an old woman holding a child, walking by a lake edge, above which a moon rises. Hennessy was an accomplished illustrator, mainly of children's books and poetry. For 'The Song of the Sower', by William Cullen Bryant, published in New York in 1871, he produced forty-two wood engravings. In 1883 he illustrated Samuel White Baker's True Tales for my Grandson, and nine years later, An Enchanted Garden, a book of