The Flower Sellers: A Historical Perspective

“The Flower Sellers,” (Las vendadoras de flores) by Mexican painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez, was recently selected to be the “theme artwork” for Art in Bloom in 2025. Alfredo Ramos Martínez, its creator, is not as well known as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but he had influence in Mexico after the Revolution of 1910.

Las vendadoras de flores, c. 1936-38

Alfredo Ramos Martinez

Tempera and pastel on heavy cardboard

Bequest of Putnam Dana McMillan • 84.19

This painting came to the Minneapolis institute of Art in 1961, as part of the bequest of Putnam Dana McMillan, who was President of the Society of Fine Arts from 1948 to 1954, and on retirement formed a collection of late 19^th century and early 20^th century paintings under the guidance of Richard S. Davies, chief curator of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. “The Flower Sellers” was accessioned to the MIA collection in 1984. A tempera and pastel drawing on heavy cardboard barely over 26 X 33 inches in size, it is not a work of art that would command attention because of its size, but the elegant composition of a procession of young women carrying baskets of flowers to market that it depicts with harmonized bright colors, has significant visual appeal.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez was born in 1871 in Monterrey, capital of the state of Nuevo Leon, in Mexico. He had a natural talent for drawing, and at the age of nine he drew a portrait of the governor of Nuevo Leon that was sent to an art exhibition in San Antonio, Texas, where it won first prize. This prize included a scholarship to study at the Academia de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. At the Academia Ramos Martínez had good teachers, but he found the classicism that they taught there stifling, and their teaching methods repressive. In 1901, American millionairess Mrs. Phoebe Hearst visited Mexico City and saw some of Ramos Martínez’s works. She was so impressed that she asked to meet with the artist, and after meeting him she agreed to provide financial support for him to continue studying art in Paris.

Ramos Martínez lived in Paris from 1901 to 1910, and in those years, he had the opportunity to see firsthand the work of modern artists such as Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. He attended various artistic and literary salons, and he saw his own artistic output change under their influence. In 1905 he began participating in the yearly “Salon d’Automne” in Paris, perhaps the most important venue for exhibiting art works at that time. In 1906 he exhibited his painting “Les Printemps” at the “Salon d’Automne,” and it was awarded the gold medal. In the works that he painted in Paris one can see the influence of the Impressionists and of the Symbolists. They are stylized and strive for gracefulness in their composition and harmony in their coloring. 

Unfortunately, at the time when Ramos Martínez was making headway in Paris, Mrs. Hearst decided that she could no longer give him his monthly stipend. He returned to Mexico in 1910, the year when the Mexican Revolution began. Students at the Academia demanded changes in its teaching methods, and in 1913 he was appointed director of the Academia with the charge to bring about change. According to Carmen Vidaurre he transformed the traditional studio classes into open workshops and promoted “au plein air” painting. Also, after 1913 one sees in his paintings a predominance of popular settings and characters, and the embrace of a Mexican cultural identity that emphasizes indigenous peoples and cultures.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez married in 1928, and he and his wife had a daughter who was born suffering from a debilitating bone disease. Initially he sought medical treatment for his child at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. In the following year, he learned that Dr. John A. Wilson of Los Angeles had developed a treatment for the disease ailing his daughter and settled in California. In Los Angeles, he was offered an exhibition at Exhibition Park. More exhibitions followed, and he developed a strong following in the Hollywood community. He also exhibited with great success in San Diego and in San Francisco, and he painted “al fresco” murals at several institutions in California, and in the chapel of the Santa Barbara Cemetery. “The Flower Sellers” dates from that period. In 1942 Ramos Martínez returned to Mexico, and he was commissioned to paint a series of murals at the Normal School for Teachers in Mexico City. But in 1945 he received several commissions in California, including that for a large “al fresco” mural at Scripps College, in Claremont, Los Angeles County, and returned to California. He died in California while working on that mural on November 8, 1946.

Ramos Martinez’s influence in Mexico from the 1910 to 1928 is documented by Carmen Vidaurre in her two-volume work El modernismo y su legado (Guadalajara, 2014), and in the exhibit catalog Alfredo Ramos Martínez and Modernismo (West Hollywood, CA: Louis Stern Fine Arts, 2009). I want to thank Valeria Piccoli, Ken and Linda Cutler Chair of the Arts of the Americas and Curator of Latin American Arts, for information on the provenance of “The Flower Vendors,” and Mary Yee for information about the procedure for selecting of the theme artwork of Art in Bloom.