Wickham Flower
Nationality: English
Date of birth: 12 December 1835
Place of birth: Bloomsbury, London
Date of death: 19 September 1904
Place of death: Croydon
Category: collector
Identity:
Wickham Flower, the son of Frances and John Wickham, a solicitor, was a solicitor and collector. On 23 April 1862 he married Elizabeth Weston Walton.
Life:
In 1884, Flower offered Whistler 205 guineas for An Orange Note: Sweet Shop y264, Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271, Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church y305, but Whistler said Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271 was priced 130 guineas in the Dowdeswell catalogue and suggested £160 for An Orange Note: Sweet Shop y264 and Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271. Flower agreed and purchased the two. He also bought several lithographs by Whistler from the Fine Art Society in 1895.
Bibliography:
UK census 1881; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; Spink, Nesta R., Harriet K. Stratis, and Martha Tedeschi, The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, (gen. eds, Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi), 2 vols., Chicago, 1998 , pp. 172-73.
