Between 1914 and 1916, New York–based artist Florine Stettheimer painted numerous floral still lifes, a subject she returned to repeatedly throughout her career. Stettheimer’s flower paintings demonstrated a departure from naturalism. She focused less on the individual blossoms than on the overall arrangement. She called her painted bouquets “eyegays,” a word she invented to emphasize that her flowers were not for the nose but for the eye. Though Stettheimer indicated that she did not intend her painted flower arrangements as metaphors, her works were also rarely literal and, she asserted, were intended for contemplation.
