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In 1891 Robert Vonnoh sent a large-scale canvas to the Salon des Champs-Élysées, a painting that at the time was simply titled Coquelicots (Poppies). The painting has since been rededicated post-World War I as In Flanders Field- Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow, following John McCrae’s famous 1915 poem honoring fallen soldiers (Butler Institute of American Art). Between 1888 and 1890 Vonnoh created several plein air paintings of poppy flowers while studying at an artist’s colony in Grez-sur-Loing, near the Forest of Fontainebleau and only a two-hour train ride from Paris. The rural village, appealing mostly to American, British, and Scandinavian artists, looking to practice in the French countryside, was close to Barbizon—a key location for artists like Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau in the 1850s. Vonnoh’s poppy paintings are early examples of American Impressionism as the artist assimilates expressive, visible brushstrokes and brilliant palettes. Vonnoh was likely inspired by Claude Monet’s 1885 Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny (MFA Boston) or his earlier 1873 Coquelicots (Musée d’Orsay). Though Vonnoh claimed not to have seen Monet’s work until 1889, he had the opportunity to view a number of Impressionist paintings, including Monet’s, at the Durand-Ruel Galleries while living in Paris. While Vonnoh’s smaller poppy works are often viewed as preparatory studies for the larger Butler composition—a connection evident in Picking Poppies (Corcoran Gallery of Art as of 1987) due to the figure’s identical pose and the canvases unfinished surface—I suggest viewing the other poppy paintings as a series, a demonstration of Vonnoh’s initial sojourn into Impressionism. Girl with French Poppies is distinct among these works in its finish and subject, suggesting it is not a provisional study. The brushwork and color of the poppy field speak to a new frontier in style for the American painter, as Vonnoh experiments in swirling hues that produce flaming poppies and spontaneous, broken brushstrokes. The poppies are indicated by visible brushwork; red and white pigment mixed on a white ground that resolve into a floral field. Yet, the depiction of the figure betrays his academic training at traditional art schools in Boston and Paris and his career as an accomplished portraitist. Though he experiments in dapples of white and purple shadows, her form is finished and modeled in a play between light and dark. Unlike the figure in Picking Poppies and In Flanders Field, who is lost in her task, Vonnoh’s subject here possesses agency in her interaction with the viewer. She engages us, delicately holding up a single poppy, perhaps suggesting the beauty of both her and the flower as her pink cheeks are comprised of the same blended hue in the field behind her. What’s oddly absent from the existing scholarship on Vonnoh’s poppy paintings is a discussion on the figures in these works. The woman’s attire in Girl with French Poppies—a blue blouse, white apron, and sunbonnet—raises questions about her position. Does her clothing suggest labor, the rosiness of her cheeks indicating the heat and effort of her work? She surely contrasts with the refined women and children with parasols that stroll through Monet’s poppy fields in his earlier Coquelicots (Musée d’Orsay). This hint at her status is possibly echoed in Vonnoh’s inclusion of a horse-drawn hay cart in the larger Butler work. Was Vonnoh capturing the reality of rural women and children or is he romanticizing a relationship between them and nature? History evolves as scholars apply fresh insights—considering these figures might offer a new perspective on Vonnoh’s transition into Impressionism, or gender and labor in late 19th century rural France.
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