Winslow Homer’s A Mountain Climber Resting captures a quiet summit pause, reflecting rising leisure travel, shifting views of nature, and the enduring ideal of solitary exploration in nineteenth-century America.
The Defense of the Homeland above All Else
Vryzakis’s 1858 painting unites heroes of the Greek Revolution in an allegorical tribute, where personified Greece honors their collective sacrifice, transforming history into memory, identity, and national gratitude.
Philip Wilson Steer’s Jonquil
Philip Wilson Steer’s Jonquil
March 4, 2026 by Amalia Spiliakou with no comment 19th century ArtArt of the United KingdomTeaching Resources Edit
Philip Wilson Steer, Jonquil, British Impressionist interior with flowers
Philip Wilson Steer, English, 1860-1942
Jonquil, 1890, Oil on Canvas, 91.5×91.5cm, Private Collection
https://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/blogs/art-photography/philip-wilson-steers-jonquil-will-lead-british-impressionist-art-sale?srsltid=AfmBOooN3TM25j_xhU_nVNGhK4y5qROs7_af7yFZ_Dpx-3wx8w8h2N41
March marks the quiet turning of the year, when winter light begins to soften and the first flowers appear almost shyly in gardens and hedgerows. For this month’s Flower of the Month, Philip Wilson Steer’s Jonquil offers a fitting celebration of early spring. The jonquil, long associated with renewal, modest joy, and the promise of warmer days, emerges here not as a botanical study, but as a moment of looking: intimate, fleeting, and tender. Steer, a leading figure in British Impressionism, was deeply attuned to atmosphere and seasonal change, and this small floral subject allows his sensitivity to come fully into focus.
Atmosphere, Light, and Everyday Beauty in Steer’s Work
Philip Wilson Steer (1860–1942) was born in Birkenhead and trained initially at the Gloucester School of Art before continuing his studies at the South Kensington School of Art in London. He later travelled to Paris, enrolling at the Académie Julian, where he encountered French Impressionist and Realist painting at first hand. This exposure proved formative. On his return to Britain, Steer became a central figure in the development of modern British painting, helping to introduce Impressionist approaches to colour, light, and natural observation. In 1886 he was a founding member of the New English Art Club, which offered an important alternative to the academic traditions of the Royal Academy. Steer went on to enjoy considerable professional success, exhibiting widely and later serving as an influential teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he shaped a generation of British artists.
Steer’s aesthetic was grounded in close observation and a deep responsiveness to light and atmosphere. Rather than dramatic narratives or grand historical themes, he gravitated toward moments of quiet presence: coastal landscapes, figures absorbed in thought, and flowers encountered at close range. His brushwork often dissolves form at the edges, allowing light to become an active presence within the composition. Colour is handled with restraint and subtlety, creating a sense of harmony rather than contrast. This sensitivity gives his paintings a reflective quality, as if the viewer is invited to share in the artist’s own act of looking.
As a leading figure in British Impressionism, Steer played a crucial role in adapting continental ideas to the British landscape and temperament. While influenced by French Impressionists, his work remains distinctively measured and introspective, favouring mood over spectacle. Nature, for Steer, was not something to be mastered or idealised, but quietly attended to, whether in the shifting light of a shoreline or the modest presence of a single flower. His interest in everyday subjects reflects a belief that beauty resides in the ordinary, revealed through patience, attentiveness, and an openness to fleeting sensory experience.
Jonquil and the Spirit of Early Spring
Philip Wilson Steer’s Jonquil depicts a young woman standing in profile beside a tall window, absorbed in the quiet act of holding and examining a small spray of pale flowers. She is dressed in a dark, simple garment that contrasts gently with the soft yellows and greens of the interior setting. The window behind her admits a cool, diffused light, which falls across her face and hands, modelling her features with subtlety rather than clarity. A small table or ledge in the foreground holds additional blossoms, echoing the flowers in her hand and reinforcing the intimacy of the scene. The setting feels domestic and enclosed, yet permeated by light, creating a sense of stillness and inwardness.
Philip Wilson Steer, Jonquil, British Impressionist interior with flowers, a drawing
Philip Wilson Steer, English, 1860-1942
Jonquil, 1890, Pen; Ink; Card, 17.7 cm x 17.8 cm, National Museums, Liverpool
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/jonquil
Steer’s aesthetics here are defined by restraint, atmosphere, and emotional understatement. The palette is carefully harmonised: muted yellows, soft greens, deep blues, and warm neutrals are balanced so that no single element asserts dominance. Brushwork is delicate and softened, particularly in the figure and background, allowing forms to merge gently with their surroundings. Light functions not as a dramatic spotlight but as an enveloping presence, dissolving edges and lending the scene a hushed, contemplative mood. The woman’s absorbed pose and the modest scale of the flowers suggest an interest in private, everyday experience rather than narrative or symbolism. Rather than sharply observing the flowers or the figure, Steer seems to suggest them emotionally, capturing a fleeting moment of quiet attention, where nature and human presence meet in a shared atmosphere of calm reflection.
In Jonquil, Steer offers not a celebration of the flower’s brightness, but a meditation on attentiveness itself. The painting’s quiet harmony of light, colour, and gesture invites the viewer to slow down and share in a moment of private contemplation, where the simple act of holding a flower becomes a reflection on season, presence, and renewal. As a work chosen for March, Jonquil gently captures the spirit of early spring—modest, inward, and full of promise.
For a PowerPoint Presentation, of Philip Wilson Steer’s oeuvre, please… Check HERE!
Bibliography: From the Walker Art Gallery https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker-art-gallery and from Sotheby’s https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2006/20th-century-british-art-l06141/lot.7.html
View of Venice
When Childe Hassam set out on his first extended European journey in the summer of 1883, he was still a young Boston-based illustrator searching for his artistic voice. Accompanied by fellow painter Edmund H. Garrett, he traveled through Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy, absorbing everything from atmospheric city scenes to masterworks in museums. Venice was among the places that captivated him most deeply. Shimmering light, reflected architecture, and a city arranged on water offered a visual language he had not yet encountered in America. Looking back on this formative trip, Hassam later wrote: “I made my sketches from nature in watercolor and I used no white. It was this method which led me into the paths of pure color… When I turned to oils, I endeavored to keep my color as vibrant.” This reflection offers a perfect lens through which to enjoy View of Venice, painted around that pivotal moment in his early career.
View of Venice and the Emergence of American Impressionism
View of Venice is a small but luminous work that captures the essence of the floating city with youthful immediacy. A gondola glides across the lagoon, fruit sellers animate the foreground, and a soaring campanile anchors the horizon, not as a monumental landmark, but as part of a living environment. Hassam’s brushwork dispenses with tight detail and instead pursues fleeting effects of atmosphere. Reflections tremble on the water’s surface; sunlight flickers across sails, stones, and faces. This sensitivity to shimmering light and transient impressions would soon become hallmarks of his mature style, but here we see it in its early, exploratory form.
Although Hassam would later refine his Impressionist language during his Paris years (1886–1889), View of Venice already reveals his fundamental shift from illustration to a modern painterly vision. His interest lies not in the grand, theatrical Venice of Canaletto, but in the lived-in Venice of ordinary people, canal traffic, and the play of natural light. It reflects the emerging belief, one he often articulated, that the modern artist should paint the world as it appears in the moment, with spontaneity and personal perception guiding the hand.
The painting’s recent appearance at Christie’s reaffirms its significance within Hassam’s development. Far from being a minor travel sketch, View of Venice represents one of the earliest surviving examples of his European awakening, a moment when he began to shed the conventions of American illustration in favor of the freer, color-driven vocabulary that would later define his career. Its provenance, stretching from early Boston collections to a Pennsylvania private estate, adds a layer of continuity: View of Venice has long been cherished as a document of transformation.
Venice itself continued to echo through Hassam’s later works. Whether painting urban New York, New England harbors, or quiet coastal views, he repeatedly explored the interplay of water, sky, architecture, and modern life. The atmospheric sensibility first awakened in the Venetian lagoon never left him. Seen in this light, View of Venice is more than an early experiment, it is a seed from which much of his later brilliance grew.
Today, this painting invites us to see Venice not as a fragile relic or tourist symbol, but as a vibrant, ever-changing stage for color and life. Through Hassam’s eyes, we experience the city with the wonder of a young artist standing at the threshold of discovery. View of Venice remains a testament to the transformative power of travel, observation, and the courage to embrace a new artistic path, a message as resonant now as it was in 1883.
For a PowerPoint Presentation of Childe Hassam’s oeuvre, please… Check HERE!
Childe Hassam remains one of the most important figures in American Impressionism. In this former Teacher Curator post, I examine another of his paintings, situating it within his broader artistic development and exploring how light, atmosphere, and everyday life define his style. Please… Check HERE!
Bibliography: According to Christie’s catalogue entry https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6519611?ldp_breadcrumb=back
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