Two Girls Arranging Flowers

Two Girls Arranging Flowers, dated 1918, belongs among the final works attributed to or registered for Zandomeneghi — who died in December 1917 — placing it in the posthumous catalogue of late canvases. The subject of two female figures engaged in a shared domestic task allowed Zandomeneghi to explore the social dynamic of female companionship that he had observed throughout his career, here in the quiet form of flower arrangement. The bouquet or flower subject appears throughout his oeuvre as both a standalone still-life concern and as an element of interior scenes. In combining two figures with the flower-arranging activity, the painting integrates the social warmth of his figure studies with the colouristic pleasure of his still-life work. Late works of this kind, informal and warmly domestic, represent the final distillation of a career devoted to the observation of feminine life in Parisian interiors — subjects unchanged in their essential character across five decades.

The late dating implies the simplified, atmospheric handling of Zandomeneghi's final years: broader strokes, reduced tonal complexity, and colour that functions atmospherically rather than descriptively. The flower colours provide chromatic variety within an otherwise warm, domestic palette.