In Bloom: Women and Horticulture in French Visual Culture, 1860s–1880s

Abstract

Evocative of fresh scents and organic forms, the phrase “in bloom” denotes a stage of growth in a plant’s life cycle and a period of rapid development, expansion, and flourishing. Drawing on these associations, my dissertation examines a sudden bloom in the number of Paris-based artists who painted scenes of modern urban life in which they explored the relationship between women and horticulture, the art of growing gardens and displaying plants. Four paintings produced in the 1870s, serve as case studies for this investigation of cultural responses to and social beliefs about Parisian women who embraced horticulture as a vocation and leisure pursuit. The pictures include Jules-Émile Saintin’s The Flower Seller, Giovanni Boldini’s Crossing the Street, Berthe Morisot’s Interior, and Édouard Manet’s In the Conservatory. These portrayals of a merchant, pedestrian, upper-class woman, and Parisienne may appear “pretty” and “trivial” at first glance. However, I reveal how the artworks engage with notions of gender, movement, urbanism, and commerce in ways that compel us to interrogate the local and global conditions that enabled Parisian women to have the privilege of intimate encounters with foreign and hybrid flora on domestic soil. I accomplish this goal by taking a critical perspective on analyzing the works and connecting their imagery to the interrelated contexts of Parisian plant industries and transregional supply chains. I also use digital mapping and historical geocoding to visualize Parisian horticultural networks by plotting the locations the artists portrayed and their proximity to florist shops, flower markets, and other key sites. These dynamic maps aid my investigation of how changes to the built environment impacted the flow of people, flora, images, and ideas in parts of Paris where flower sellers, prostitutes, pedestrian-shoppers, and domestic gardeners circulated. Citing maps, paintings, and other forms of evidence, I articulate a new model for studying the mobility of women who participated in local plant trades and their movement within historically contingent and continually shifting horticultural networks. To extrapolate from these sources some of the routes that women used to market, transport, and distribute plants, I invoke Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome.