Jongkind began his career as a Dutch landscape and marine painter, but after moving to Paris in 1846 and quickly integrating into its artistic community, he turned his attention to views of the modern city. He was especially drawn to the banks of the Seine near Notre Dame. He became friendly with painters like Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Constant Troyon, and prominent critics Charles Baudelaire, Jules Castagnary, and Champfleury. They typically met at the café Le Divan Le Pelletier or the neighboring Dinochau restaurant in the ninth arrondissement at the base of Montmartre. Le Marché aux fleurs, boulevard Richard Lenoir is a rare work by Jongkind centering on women and urban life rather than on architecture and landscape. It is a sunny day and the market is filled with flowering plants and promenading pedestrians. Jongkind’s free brushwork captures the lively activity of the scene against the backdrop of the tree-lined boulevard. In the distance beyond the crowd, the recognizable silhouette of the July Column rises, crowned by Augustin-Alexandre Dumon’s gilded Génie de la Liberté; the column was erected on the Place de la Bastille to commemorate the Revolution of 1830. The result is precisely the kind of painting of modern life that Baudelaire had called for: a fleeting glimpse of life in the modern city and of its fashionable inhabitants. In its spontaneity and colors, the work anticipates the interests of the Impressionist artists whom Jongkind would later inspire. As broad new boulevards and large public parks transformed mid-nineteenth-century Paris, its inhabitants increasingly lived their lives in public view. Jongkind’s brisk brushstrokes capture the ever-changing spectacle that characterized Parisian life as the city’s population surged to over a million people. At the far left, a horse-drawn carriage and its liveried coachmen pause, while a nanny, seated amongst the plants, watches passersby while her charge sprawls across her lap. Bonneted women and top-hatted gentlemen punctuate the scene. In the foreground, however, one woman commands the attention of the viewer and the crowd. Dressed in a fashionable black dress and bonnet with eye-catching red ribbons, she dramatically lifts her skirts as she walks, revealing her white stockinged leg and black botines (boots) in the process. To period viewers, this gesture would have identified her as a cocotte (mistress) rather than a respectable bourgeois woman. She is conspicuously alone and is deliberately advertising her availability. In contrast, the two women behind her allow their multi-tiered skirts to respectably graze the ground as they walk. Jongkind was fascinated by this bold woman and her gesture, repeatedly sketching her in several related studies. Her dress has the pagoda sleeves then fashionable and its deep black color signals her status and success as black was one of the most expensive fabric colors of the day. The luminous red ribbons and the red blossoms on her bonnet visually rhyme with the striking red flowers on sale beside her. Her noticeably red lips imply that she is wearing lipstick, which at the time was associated with cocottes. Jongkind further marks her difference from the other women by having her carry a pink parasol, while all the other women, in an unusual uniformity, carry blue parasols. The white triangle of petticoat visible beneath the cocotte’s raised skirt echoes the white paper wrappings of the pots of flowers next to her—both are ready to be taken home by an interested customer. Large potted plants, particularly those in flower, commanded higher prices than cut stems; likewise cocottes were known for their extravagance and thus were expensive to maintain in the style that they were accustomed to. They ruled the so-called demimonde (half-world), where elite men socialized with their mistresses in the glittering theaters and vibrant racetracks of the new Paris. Jongkind’s focus on crowds and fashionable figures anticipates Édouard Manet’s Music in the Tuileries (1862, The National Gallery, London). His contribution to the development of Impressionism would become even more consequential in the following decades. Friendships with Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet, and Frédéric Bazille would ultimately lead to an invitation to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1874. Monet would remember Jongkind as his “true master,” and would attribute to him “the definitive education of my eye.” The seeds of that influence are already visible here. With its loose brushwork, attention to light, and fascination. with the fleeting encounters of urban life, Le Marché aux fleurs stands as a compelling early example of Jongkind's role as a forerunner of Impressionism. Justine De Young, Ph. D