The Flower Show Pictures

Blog Post #16

The 1930s presented its obstacles to the hand colored photography movement with the stock market crash of ’29 and the Great Depression following. But the ’30s also brought new opportunities for photographers and colorists to take advantage of.

By 1920 the garden club movement in our country became closely affiliated with historic preservation. This led to the start of the famous publication in 1924, Better Homes & Gardens. More and more cars fueled The Highway Beautification act through the 1920s. So by the 1930s you could say that flowers and garden clubs were in full bloom. Hand colored photography artist reacted by creating more colorful pictures and garden scenes. These are just a few of the many Davidson garden scenes from my collection. Jamaica, Pond and Emerald Necklace of parks in Boston became Davidson’s focal point to create many of these pictures.

Wallace nutting in his final days created his series of still life floral pictures, many of which brought some of the highest prices of any of his works. These are some of the Nutting florals from my collection.

But Davidson captured the garden club and flower uprising in a way that none of the others did. He actually took pictures at flower shows focusing on the diverse array of garden club displays.

The flower show that was photographed by David Davidson took place at the Rhode Island auditorium on North Main St. in Providence. The Arena, as it was referred to, was built in 1925 and demolished in 1989. As far as the information I’ve been able to gather, Davidson photographed these events from 1934 to 1940. Fortunately, many of these pictures are dated as well as sign and titled.

This collection within my collection started years ago with this picture, which we’ve seen before back in block post #4: Sitting Pretty. The picture that I bought at auction years before I knew anything about the flower shows it was connected to:

Sitting Pretty

And this picture of a garden club display that I bought about 30 to 40 years ago at Brimfield antique show, not having any idea what the connection was.

Hillside Garden Club

The collection of pictures which I purchased almost 20 years ago, came to me in a box that looked as though it had been closed off from the light of day for maybe 70 years. Its contents, about 100 pictures as bright and colorful as the day they were taken.

For some reason, it seems that only a very few of these pictures have ever surfaced on the secondary market. Outside of what I own, I have only seen one of these flower show pictures.

But just last week as I was writing, this, something came to me that I had never thought of. None of these pictures are stamped with a copyright.   Which means that Davidson did not make these to be on the resale market. This was a private commission job, possibly made to sell to the garden club through the promoters of the shows. Lack of interest may have left Davidson to pack them up and store them away. This is all speculation on my part. If someone can shed further light on this, please contact me.

The Davidson flower show pictures. The most colorful flower garden pictures created by the hand colored photography industry. But so rare that almost no one has ever seen them.

The Salesman… A story for another day.