Titles

Various titles have been suggested:

• Possibly 'Nocturne: Black and Gold (No. 5) – Chelsea Stall' (1884, Dowdeswell). 1
• 'Prodavshchitsa pomerantsev' (1921, Pertsev). 2
• 'Orange Woman' (1969, Kroll). 3
• 'Orange Woman' (1980, YMSM). 4
• 'Orange Woman (La marchande d'orange)' (2006, Tretyakow). 5
• 'Shopgirl' (2020, Hermitage Museum). 6

'Orange Woman' is the preferred title.

Description

A street scene in horizontal format. Dominating the composition is a fruit stall with several pyramidal heaps of oranges, brightly lit by lights above. At left are two ghostly figures by the stall, and in front of it, a woman with a coral-red shawl. To right of the stall is a door and possibly low houses. It is dark and murky.

Site

The stall may well have been selling juice as well as fruit. It could be a street in Chelsea, London, or in Paris or Dieppe, France. A number appears to be indicated on the door at right.

Sitter

Neither the orange seller nor site has been identified. Orange sellers were, according to Mayhew, considered inferior to costermongers:

'The orange season is called by the costermonger the "Irishman's harvest." Indeed, the street trade in oranges and nuts is almost entirely in the hands of the Irish and their children; and of the children of costermongers. The costers themselves would rather starve – and do starve now and then – than condescend to it.' 7

Mayhew describes the small-scale fruit and nut sellers in the Jewish quarter of London, an area where Whistler certainly etched nut and melon stalls:

'Some of the nut and orange shops in Duke's-place it would be impossible to describe. At one sat an old woman, with jetblack hair and a wrinkled face, nursing an infant, and watching over a few matted baskets of nuts ranged on a kind of carpenter's bench placed upon the pavement. The interior of the house was as empty as if it had been to let, excepting a few bits of harness hanging against the wall, and an old salt-box nailed near the gas-lamp, in which sat a hen, "hatching," as I was told.' 8

Mayhew continues with a lengthy and fascinating survey of the orange selling business:

'Of foreign fruits, the oranges and nuts supply by far the greater staple for the street trade ...

Oranges were first sold in the streets at the close of Elizabeth's reign. So rapidly had the trade increased, that four years after her death, or in 1607, Ben Jonson classes "orange-wives," for noisiness, with "fish-wives." These women at first carried the oranges in baskets on their heads; barrows were afterwards used; and now trays are usually slung to the shoulders.

Oranges are brought to this country in cases or boxes, containing from 500 to 900 oranges. From official tables, it appears that between 250,000,000 and 300,000,000 of oranges and lemons are now yearly shipped to England. They are sold wholesale, principally at public sales, in lots of eight boxes, the price at such sales varying greatly, according to the supply and the quality. The supply continues to arrive from October to August.

Oranges are bought by the retailers in Duke's place and in Covent-Garden; but the costermongers nearly all resort to Duke's-place, and the shopkeepers to Covent-Garden. They are sold in baskets of 200 or 300; they are also disposed of by the hundred, a half-hundred being the smallest quantity sold in Duke's-place. These hundreds, however, number 110, containing 10 double "hands," a single hand being 5 oranges. The price in December was 2s. 6d., 3s. 6d., and 4s. the hundred. They are rarely lower than 4s. about Christmas, as there is then a better demand for them. The damaged oranges are known as "specks," and the purchaser runs the risk of specks forming a portion of the contents of a basket, as he is not allowed to empty it for the examination of the fruit: but some salesmen agree to change the specks. A month after Christmas, oranges are generally cheaper, and become dearer again about May, when there is a great demand for the supply of the fairs and races.

Oranges are sold by all classes connected with the fruit, flower, or vegetable trade of the streets. The majority of the street-sellers are, however, women and children, and the great part of these are Irish. It has been computed that, when oranges are "at their best" (generally about Easter), there are 4,000 persons, including stallkeepers, selling oranges in the metropolis and its suburbs; while there are generally 3,000 out of this number "working" oranges -that is, hawking them from street to street: of these, 300 attend at the doors of the theatres, saloons, &c. Many of those "working" the theatres confine their trade to oranges, while the other dealers rarely do so, but unite with them the sale of nuts of some kind. Those who sell only oranges, or only nuts, are mostly children, and of the poorest class. The smallness of the sum required to provide a stock of oranges (a half-hundred being 15d. or 18d.), enables the poor, who cannot raise "stock-money" sufficient to purchase anything else, to trade upon a few oranges.

The regular costers rarely buy oranges until the spring, except, perhaps, for Sunday afternoon sale -though this, as I said before, they mostly object to. In the spring, however, they stock their barrows with oranges. One man told me that, four or five years back, he had sold in a day 2,000 oranges that he picked up as a bargain. They did not cost him half a farthing each; he said he "cleared 2l. by the spec." At the same period he could earn 5s. or 6s. on a Sunday afternoon by the sale of oranges in the street; but now he could not earn 2s.

... According to the Board of Trade returns, there are nearly two hundred millions of oranges annually imported into this country. About one-third of these are sold wholesale in London, and one-fourth of the latter quantity disposed of retail in the streets. The returns I have procured, touching the London sale, prove that no less than 15,500,000 are sold yearly by the street-sellers. The retail price of these may be said to be, upon an average, 5s. per 110, and this would give us about 35,000l. for the gross sum of money laid out every year, in the streets, in the matter of oranges alone.' 9