Flower Sellers Sorting Piles of Marigolds and Pink Blooms — Print & Oil Painting

One hand is raised and everything else in the picture is bent down. Three quarters of the canvas is taken up by flowers lying on the ground and by two women crouched over them, and the single upright gesture is a hand lifted to eye level holding one small red and pink bloom out for inspection.

The yellow is enormous. Marigolds are heaped across the lower half in a continuous drift, from a dense mound at the centre out to a long ridge running to the right edge, each flower a separate stiff dab of chrome and cadmium, with broad green leaves laid underneath them like matting.

The two vendors share a hat and nothing else. The one at the left kneels in a pale blue white jacket scattered with small gold flower marks, one arm braced and the other raised; the one at the right is in plain white and folded much lower, almost lying across the yellow with both arms out into it. Their hats are broad straw cones seen from above and painted as clean radiating triangles.

At the lower left a deep round basket holds the other half of the stock: magenta, scarlet, white and pale pink blooms packed tight with dark green foliage, and one small bright object wedged among them. It is the only place in the painting where the colour is neither yellow nor brown.

Behind them the background is left unresolved on purpose, a warm field of ochre, umber and dull rose with the suggestion of a stall and a jar at the upper right and nothing described. From our Vietnam collection, near vietnamese flower vendors sitting in the rain and flower sellers sitting in the rain before a misty pagoda.