After studying in London, Paris, and at the Hague, George Hitchcock settled in 1884 in the Netherlands, living and working for twenty years in Egmond. Attracted to the region’s landscape and peasant communities, the artist specialized in scenes featuring women in traditional dress set among voluptuous, blooming flowers. Here, Hitchcock revised the environment behind the Dutch flower seller, editing out other houses nearby in favor of a bucolic vista. Although he employed academic techniques such as fine modeling of his figures, Hitchcock nevertheless earned a reputation as a daring colorist for the brilliant hues and open brushwork that likewise characterize his compositions.
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George Hitchcock, “The Picturesque Quality of Holland,” Scribner’s Magazine (August 1887): 160–68.
George Hitchcock, “The Picturesque Quality of Holland: Interiors and Bric–a–Brac,” Scribner’s Magazine 5, 2 (Feb. 1889): 162–71.
Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report, 1889 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1889): 26.
“George Hitchcock,” Art Amateur 22 (Feb. 1890): 54–56.
Lionel G. Robinson, “Mr. George Hitchcock and American Art,” Art Journal (London, Oct. 1891): 289–95.
Lionel G. Robinson, “The Picturesque Quality of Holland: Figures and Costumes,” Scribner’s Magazine 10, 5 (Nov. 1891): 621–29.
Rilla Jackman, American Arts (Rand McNally and Company, 1892), pl LII.
Helene L. Postlethwaite, “Some Rising Artists,” Magazine of Art 17 (1893–94): 113–18.
“Modern Paintings,” Art Amateur 32 (Dec. 1894): 19.
Charles Francis Browne, “The Permanent Collection in the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.” Brush and Pencil 2 (Sept. 1898): 252–61, no. 237.
Florence Levy, ed., American Art Annual (MacMillan and Company, 1898): 141 (ill.).
Arthur Fish, “George Hitchock: Painter,” Magazine of Art 21 (1898): 577–83.
“Around the Studios,” American Art News 3 (Feb. 18, 1905): 5.
Christian Brinton, “George Hitchcock—Painter of Sunlight,” International Studio 24 (July 1905): i–vi.
Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 3 (Jan. 1911): 33.
James William Pattison, “The Art of George Hitchcock and Cecil Jay,” Fine Arts Journal 25 (Feb. 1911): 72–83.
Charles Henry Meltzer, “A Painter of Sunlight,” Hearst’s Magazine 12 (July 1912): 131–34.
Guy Pene du Bois, “George Hitchock: Painter of Holland,” Arts and Decoration 3 (Oct. 1913): 401–04.
Peyton Boswell, “The George Hitchcock Memorial Exhibition to be held at a New York Gallery,” Arts and Decoration 14 (Feb. 1921): 297.
“Current Notes and Comments: ‘The Flower Seller,’ by George Hitchcock,” Art and Archaeology 11 (Mar. 1921:, 113–17.
Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961).
Michael Quick, American Expatriate Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century, exh. cat., (Dayton Art Institute, 1976).
Janice Oresman, “Gari Melchers’ Portraits of Mrs. George Hitchcock,” Archives of American Art Journal 20, 3 (1980): 19–24.
The Hague School and its American Legacy, exh. cat., (Federal Reserve, 1982).
Annette Stott, American Painters Who Worked in the Netherlands, 1880–1914 (Ph.D. Diss., Boston University, 1986), no. 428.
Annette Stott, “Dutch Utopia: Paintings by Antimodern American Artists of the Nineteenth Century,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art (Spring 1989): 47–61.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998).
Judith A. Barter, et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), cat. 50.
Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai: Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 26.
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of Paintings in the New Galleries, Apr. 5, 1890, cat. 14.
Art Institute of Chicago, Room XIII, Collection of Paintings from Various Sources, Aug. 1890, cat. 2.
Art Association of Richmond, IN, Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Art Association of Richmond, Indiana, June 6–20, 1905, cat. 50, as Flower Girl in Holland.
Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, Paintings by Famous Victorian Painters, Nov. 7–Dec. 3, 1938, as Holland Flower Girl.
Evanston, IL, Scott Hall, Northwestern University, Mar. 18–Apr. 2, 1954.
Springfield, Illinois State Museum, Nineteenth Century American Paintings: A Collection of the Chicago Art Institute, Mar. 5–Apr. 24, 1966, as Flower Girl in Holland; Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Iowa, May 19–June 5, 1966, Muscatine, Iowa, Laura Musser Art Gallery and Museum, July 24–Oct. 2, 1966, Peoria, Ill., Lakeview Center for the Art and Sciences, Nov. 30–Jan. 8, 1967.
Detroit Institute of Arts, The Quest for Unity: American Art Between World’s Fairs 1876–1893, Aug. 22–Oct. 30, 1983, cat. 145, as Flower Girl in Holland.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 26.
George Hitchcock, Egmond-aan-Zee, Holland, 1887; Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago, by 1888; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1888.
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