Edith Halpert, the prominent New York art dealer and founder of The Downtown Gallery, gave this painting to Greenwich Village restaurateur, Romany Marie, in 1934. Romany Marie owned a series of bistros in the Village in the early twentieth century, which served as hot spots for artists including Stuart Davis. Marie cultivated an atmosphere in her establishments where creative individuals could congregate and thrive, even trading meals for artwork in t.mes s of need to support her patrons. “Serious people, writers, artists, whatever, could eat free if they needed to, without embarrassment,” she recalls in her biography (Robert Schulman, Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village, 2006, p. 76).

Davis resided in a room above Romany Marie’s tavern on the corner of Eighth and MacDougal Streets in 1933, shortly after the creation of Flags. To further illustrate the close relationship between Davis and Marie, the artist incorporated his friend’s name into the green form within the composition - spelling out ‘Romany Marie’ in a delicately-constructed dotted line. The prolonged relationship between Stuart Davis and Romany Marie transcended life, with Davis speaking at her funeral in 1961.