The Flower Seller on the Pont Royal with the Louvre beyond, Paris

Much like his radical contemporaries who came to be known as the Impressionists after 1874, the Belle Époque artist Marie-François Firmin-Girard was fascinated by urban life. Paris' bustling city streets with its outdoor vendors and modern cafés frequented by elegantly dressed men and women provided artists with a wealth of previously unexplored subjects. Firmin-Girard recorded these scenes with keen attention to detail, providing current viewers with an intriguing glimpse of fin-de-siècle Paris.

While studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in the 1850s, Firmin-Girard established a reputation as an accomplished flower painter, a skill that is fully revealed in the present work. Standing on the Pont Royal, one of the iconic 17th century bridges crossing the Seine, a smartly dressed woman and her attendant select a bouquet from an overloaded cart of red, pink, yellow and white flowers. Paris' bridges would become popular Impressionist subjects in the ensuing years. The Pont Royal in particular appealed to Camille Pissarro who painted a series of bird's eye views of the bridge. Rather than the elevated panoramic perspective found in Pissarro's and other Impressionists' works, Firmin-Girard chose a close-up intimate view that allowed him to portray a specific narrative scene.