The Carnation Seller
Ca. 1786. Oil on canvas.Room 094
Scenes of street vendors proliferated in eighteenth-century Spain, as they had in France, England and Italy, both because of the picturesque nature of their street cries and their apparel, and because they were regarded from then on as a true reflection of national identity. Here, however, Bayeu gives his carnation seller a curiously melancholy air, hitherto unexplained.