What Is The Appeal Of Flower Paintings?
Many artists of the past have turned to flowers as a subject for their paintings. What's the appeal? It's an automatic choice; colourful, beautiful, transient, flowers call out to be celebrated and immortalized on canvas. Their colours and shapes offer a seductive challenge to any artist, and the end result is often beautiful. In addition, they provide a respite from more challenging subjects. As Renoir said, 'I just let my mind rest when I paint flowers,' and it's not hard to see his point. The beauty is already built into the subject, and blatantly obvious; all the artist has to do is copy what they see onto canvas.
Dutch Still Life Painters - The Golden Age.
For calm and studied images of flowers, go back to the Dutch still life painters of the 17th century. Technically accomplished and precise, these paintings reflect the apprenticeship education of the artists, in which they'd be taught everything about painting as a craft, from grinding their own pigments to applying gold leaf to picture frames. The still life, and its sub-genre, the flower painting, was an opportunity for these artists to display their skill in rendering different surfaces and textures, and the play of light across them. Ambrosius Bosschaert, who lived from 1573 to 1621, was one of the first flower painters. His three sons continued the tradition, at a time when the Dutch national obsession with exotic flowers was at its height, and contributed to their success. The detailed realism and symbolism in their paintings appealed to their bourgeois patrons, who had replaced Church and State as the principal collectors of art in the Netherlands.
Still Life of Flowers in a Drinking Glass by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder.
Vanitas paintings were popular at this time, in which sumptuous arrangements of objects associated with life's pleasures shared the picture with symbolic reminders of its impermanence. An hourglass, a burning candle, the turned pages of a book, or even a skull, would serve as a sharp reminder of the transience of life. The fruits and flowers the artists painted might be shown on the cusp of decay to make the point.
The techniques of Dutch flower painting were compiled and published by Gerard de Lairesse in 1707, in a treatise called Groot Schilderboek. This contained advice on colour and brushwork, harmony, composition, perspective, the preparation of specimens, and everything else concerned with the painting of flowers.
The French Impressionists.
The French Impressionists of the nineteenth century often turned to flowers in their paintings, perhaps because they offered a subject that was sympathetic to their use of colour and methods of painting. Monet famously spent his last years painting his flower garden in Giverny, but long before that turned his attention on occasion to vases of iris and sunflowers.
Water Lilies by Monet
Renoir had a particular love for painting full blooming, luxurious flowers. His flower paintings have a similar, lush feeling to his beautiful female nudes.
Henri Fantin-Latour was a close associate of the Impressionists, and a friend of Whistler and Manet, though his own style remained relatively restrained and academic in comparison. Whistler helped him achieve success in England, where his still life and flower pieces sold well, through his London agents, Mr and Mrs Edwin Edwards. From 1880, he and his wife, flower painter Victoria Dubourg, spent the spring and summer in Normandy, where they grew flowers. After breakfast, Fantin-Latour would walk through his garden, picking flowers to create the arrangements he would paint.
Van Gogh created two series of paintings of sunflowers, which became some of the most widely known images in Western art. He painted the first in Paris in 1887, and the second in Arles in 1888. The Paris series features sunflowers laid on the floor, while those in the Arles series are presented in a vase. To Van Gogh's chagrin, Gaugin claimed one of the paintings in exchange for studies he had left behind, a decision with which Van Gogh was not at all happy. On a sad note, while Van Gogh painted his sunflowers in vibrant yellows, made possible by the recent invention of new pigments such as Chrome Yellow, today his sunflowers are turning brown. This is due to the addition of white pigments he used to brighten the yellows, and to sunlight. This oxidizes the oil in the paint, which releases electrons that are taken up by the pigment, lead chromate, which then turns green. The green paint and the oxidized oil look brown. This is according to conservationists who've been studying the problem and resorted to testing some old samples of the lead chromate Van Gogh used. If you're really that interested, check out the paper, here.
Modern And Contemporary Flower Painters.
Georgia O'Keeffe is perhaps the most well known painter of flowers of recent times. She transformed the genre by focusing intently on single blooms, allowing them to fill large canvases with their rich colour. Their close-cropped edges push her flowers right to the surface of the canvas, where their blazing colours form an almost abstract composition.
Abstraction White Rose by Georgia O'Keeffe.
Alongside the fine art tradition of flowers as a subject runs the tradition of botanical illustration, which grew with the development of the scientific study of nature. A modern example of this is the illustrator Anna Knights, whose contemporary botanical illustrations are exhibited every year at the Chelsea Flower Show. Her highly detailed, realistic paintings, executed in watercolour, show her simple subjects - flowers, fruit - in their best light.
Flower Paintings - Conclusion.
Whether you're a painter yourself, or someone who just loves to see images of flowers, there are places of interest online. I'm rather taken with the work of Susan Entwistle, for example, whose deceptively naive paintings have a calm and restful feel to them.
Many artists of the past have turned to flowers as a subject for their paintings. What's the appeal? It's an automatic choice; colourful, beautiful, transient, flowers call out to be celebrated and immortalized on canvas. Their colours and shapes offer a seductive challenge to any artist, and the end result is often beautiful. In addition, they provide a respite from more challenging subjects. As Renoir said, 'I just let my mind rest when I paint flowers,' and it's not hard to see his point. The beauty is already built into the subject, and blatantly obvious; all the artist has to do is copy what they see onto canvas.
Dutch Still Life Painters - The Golden Age.
For calm and studied images of flowers, go back to the Dutch still life painters of the 17th century. Technically accomplished and precise, these paintings reflect the apprenticeship education of the artists, in which they'd be taught everything about painting as a craft, from grinding their own pigments to applying gold leaf to picture frames. The still life, and its sub-genre, the flower painting, was an opportunity for these artists to display their skill in rendering different surfaces and textures, and the play of light across them. Ambrosius Bosschaert, who lived from 1573 to 1621, was one of the first flower painters. His three sons continued the tradition, at a time when the Dutch national obsession with exotic flowers was at its height, and contributed to their success. The detailed realism and symbolism in their paintings appealed to their bourgeois patrons, who had replaced Church and State as the principal collectors of art in the Netherlands.
Still Life of Flowers in a Drinking Glass by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder.
Vanitas paintings were popular at this time, in which sumptuous arrangements of objects associated with life's pleasures shared the picture with symbolic reminders of its impermanence. An hourglass, a burning candle, the turned pages of a book, or even a skull, would serve as a sharp reminder of the transience of life. The fruits and flowers the artists painted might be shown on the cusp of decay to make the point.
The techniques of Dutch flower painting were compiled and published by Gerard de Lairesse in 1707, in a treatise called Groot Schilderboek. This contained advice on colour and brushwork, harmony, composition, perspective, the preparation of specimens, and everything else concerned with the painting of flowers.
The French Impressionists.
The French Impressionists of the nineteenth century often turned to flowers in their paintings, perhaps because they offered a subject that was sympathetic to their use of colour and methods of painting. Monet famously spent his last years painting his flower garden in Giverny, but long before that turned his attention on occasion to vases of iris and sunflowers.
Water Lilies by Monet
Renoir had a particular love for painting full blooming, luxurious flowers. His flower paintings have a similar, lush feeling to his beautiful female nudes.
Henri Fantin-Latour was a close associate of the Impressionists, and a friend of Whistler and Manet, though his own style remained relatively restrained and academic in comparison. Whistler helped him achieve success in England, where his still life and flower pieces sold well, through his London agents, Mr and Mrs Edwin Edwards. From 1880, he and his wife, flower painter Victoria Dubourg, spent the spring and summer in Normandy, where they grew flowers. After breakfast, Fantin-Latour would walk through his garden, picking flowers to create the arrangements he would paint.
Van Gogh created two series of paintings of sunflowers, which became some of the most widely known images in Western art. He painted the first in Paris in 1887, and the second in Arles in 1888. The Paris series features sunflowers laid on the floor, while those in the Arles series are presented in a vase. To Van Gogh's chagrin, Gaugin claimed one of the paintings in exchange for studies he had left behind, a decision with which Van Gogh was not at all happy. On a sad note, while Van Gogh painted his sunflowers in vibrant yellows, made possible by the recent invention of new pigments such as Chrome Yellow, today his sunflowers are turning brown. This is due to the addition of white pigments he used to brighten the yellows, and to sunlight. This oxidizes the oil in the paint, which releases electrons that are taken up by the pigment, lead chromate, which then turns green. The green paint and the oxidized oil look brown. This is according to conservationists who've been studying the problem and resorted to testing some old samples of the lead chromate Van Gogh used. If you're really that interested, check out the paper, here.
Modern And Contemporary Flower Painters.
Georgia O'Keeffe is perhaps the most well known painter of flowers of recent times. She transformed the genre by focusing intently on single blooms, allowing them to fill large canvases with their rich colour. Their close-cropped edges push her flowers right to the surface of the canvas, where their blazing colours form an almost abstract composition.
Abstraction White Rose by Georgia O'Keeffe.
Alongside the fine art tradition of flowers as a subject runs the tradition of botanical illustration, which grew with the development of the scientific study of nature. A modern example of this is the illustrator Anna Knights, whose contemporary botanical illustrations are exhibited every year at the Chelsea Flower Show. Her highly detailed, realistic paintings, executed in watercolour, show her simple subjects - flowers, fruit - in their best light.
Flower Paintings - Conclusion.
Whether you're a painter yourself, or someone who just loves to see images of flowers, there are places of interest online. I'm rather taken with the work of Susan Entwistle, for example, whose deceptively naive paintings have a calm and restful feel to them.
