TitleMay Flowers
Artist
George Cochran Lambdin
(1830 - 1896)
Date1863
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 42 × 33 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of James A. Suydam, 1865
Object number722-P
Label TextSometimes called Spring Flowers, this work may have been bought directly from the artist by James Suydam, probably shortly after it was painted; Suydam was acknowledged as its lender to the Pennsylvania Academy annual exhibition in the spring of 1864. When the picture was shown at the Artists Fund Society Exhibition in New York in 1864, a critic writing for The New Path was compelled to record a long and rather caustic tirade which begins:It cannot be too late yet, Mr. Lambdin, but it will be, soon! This picture of 'May Flowers,' is not the worst thing you have done yet, but, if you will now do as you promised five years ago, and paint a good picture, it will show to double advantage by the memory of this. Is it possible that you, too, have sheathed your sword, and given in to the prevailing notion that there comes a time when study may cease, and art begin? You are working as if you believed it, but we are very sure you do not. These pictures make us sorry more than angry. Only one thing we will say, that your work such as it is, is not copied, but is your own, and, even now, if, instead of dreaming and theorizing you would draw diligently, and let color go for a year or two, there is hope.
