This remarkable image — In Love’s Garden: “The Peach Blossom” (from 1904) — appeared on my Pinterest feed this morning:
(#1) A peach blossom, with a bit of stem attached, and a female face, adored by a young man (the word sentimental comes to mind); to very modern eyes. just the combination of the word peach and the image of the flower will probably instead evoke buttocks (as the object of sexual desire), in the peach emoji 🍑 used in sexting — though this was obviously far from the artist’s intention 120 years ago
A bit of clicking from the Pinterest image led to the Prints with a Past site (“antique prints dating from the late 1700s through early 1900s”), where color prints of #1 are offered for sale. There the artist was identified as John Cecil Day (US). A search on this name got me nothing; well, illustrators are generally under-appreciated, and Day might have been a niche artist, of little note even in his own time.
But searches will turn up lots of things that aren’t what you asked for but have names similar to your search terms. And so my search for John Cecil Day brought me to an illustrator named John Cecil Clay, who looked an awful lot like my guy. I pulled up my copy of #1, got out my big magnifier, and looked at the signature. Yes, for sure, John Cecil Clay, famous enough to have a Wikipedia page. And the creator of a series of In Love’s Garden illustrations, of flowers that were also women. The Prints with a Past staff had misread the signature.
With the right name on hand, I could find more flowers from Clay’s garden. Two more of these, and then on to the fascinating story of Clay’s life; and a final note on sexting with emoji.
