The grace and glory, the exultant euphoria of successful flower painting
Art is not going to the dogs in every field. Take flower painting. The Ancient Egyptians were depicting garden scenes from about 2000 BC, especially in private tombs, painting with delight and verisimilitude plants such as the mandrake, the red poppy, cornflowers and (a favourite) the blue and white lotus. In Europe, mediaeval and Renaissance art was intensely floriated, and German artists, especially Dürer, painted flowers with almost religious passion, accuracy and grace. But it was in the Netherlands that flower painting evolved into a special art form. Entire families of gifted and dedicated artists such as Ambrosius Bosschaert, his three sons Ambrosius the Younger, Johannes and Abraham, and his brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast, did virtually nothing else but construct elaborate flower pieces, in oil, usually on copper or special board, to adorn the state rooms of wealthy Dutch merchants and officials, who themselves ‘collected’ special blooms, especially tulips, and scientific botany books. So the flowers depicted had to be minutely accurate.
These artists, and others such as Roelandt Savery, Jan Brueghel the Elder and his pupil Daniel Seghers were obliged by the taste of their rich patrons to provide bouquets, in elaborate vases, of flowers whose blossoming took place over the entire spring and summer, so the finished product in oils could never be painted in one campaign, as it were. Instead they compiled elaborate studies in pencil, ink and watercolour throughout the year and then, when they got a special commission — often listing the flowers to be displayed — transferring the studies to the copper or panel. Patrons often requested that fruit, especially grapes and peaches, be mingled with the blooms. There were four essential characteristics of this form of high art: an enamel-like finish, the minimal of overlapping so that each flower is revealed almost in its entirety, even lighting to make possible a radial composition, usually an oval, which fills three quarters of the picture, and cunning background effects to anchor the floral vessel firmly in space.
This species of Dutch and Flemish flower art evolved very early in the 17th century and lasted about 125 years. It reached its climax in the work of a mysterious and brilliant craftsman-genius, Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), who lived his entire life in Amsterdam, working in secrecy to produce a total of 241 (surviving) flower pieces for a select group of princely patrons in Europe, plus a few of the more enlightened younger English collectors, notably Horace Walpole. Huysum turned away from the rather dark palettes of his predecessors, racked up the colour-range several degrees, and made his works blaze with fierce reds, oranges and yellows. He also abandoned the formal oval composition in an urn or big vase, and made the blooms and fruit spread all over the picture, almost in the chaotic abandon of nature, but in fact composed with stunning artifice. Huysum made many beautiful flower and fruit studies, a superb collection of which are in the British Museum. But he always painted direct from nature, so his oils were each composed over six to nine months, the vacant spaces being filled in as the flowers came into bloom and the fruit was picked. This gives his works an astonishingly vivid and racy flavour. In his masterpiece in the Wallace Collection, ‘Fruit and Flowers’, painted about 1720, you long to plunge your teeth into the peaches, pluck the grapes and gobble the melon, while the gossamer leaves of the flowers appear to move softly in the air which pours in through the studio window. The colours are strong yet delicate, riotous and infinite in their subtle gradations. This work is a great painting by any standard and worth a special visit to the Wallace (which sells a firstclass colour postcard of it). If one looks at the subsequent competition when the centre of flower painting moved from Holland to France in the 1730s, it is evident that none of the practitioners, not even Chardin (who occasionally did flower painting), Henri Fantin-Latour or Odilon Redon, had the same power and concentration. Huysum knew he was a genius, and that his skill was based on a wide range of technical tricks he had evolved over half a century. He was accordingly suspicious of visitors to his studio and never took pupils, with one exception.
This exception was a woman, Margareta Haverman, who took her knowledge to Paris in the 1720s when the fashion moved there. Evidently Huysum trusted Margareta not to betray his secrets. It is a notable fact that women have always been skilled and successful in flower paintings. Jan Brueghel himself learned to paint flowers under the tutelage of his grandmother, Marie Bessemers, who flourished in the mid-16th century; and one of the finest of the 17th-century experts was Judith Leyster, who painted tulips with extraordinary aplomb and ingenuity. Today, flower painting is dominated by women, as it is one of the few forms of art which has not been corrupted by modernism, for if you do not stick close to nature by acute observation and meticulous rendering, your painting does not work at all.
I beg anyone who cares for the delicate yet bold art of rendering flowers in two dimensions to visit the Chris Beetles Gallery in Ryder Street, St James, where the Edinburgh artist Geraldine Girvan is showing nearly 40 of her works until 7 April. (Just before going there, I strongly recommend a visit to the Wallace Collection to see the Huysums.) Some of these beautiful pictures are in oils, and some in watercolour and bodycolour, but they all have in common the six virtues of successful flower painting. First they are daring, risk-taking and adventurous. The design is direct and plain, the paint is put on firmly and strongly and there is no messing about. Second, the colours are robust and rich: plenty of reds, applied with conviction and full force, some tremendous orange hues against dark, leafy backgrounds, and a full range of yellows, the most dangerous and difficult colour of all, yet essential in flower painting. Girvan is not afraid to use red against red background, a tricky move but a winner when it comes off. Third, she produces texture, especially when painting velvety violets, but also to differentiate the scores of leaves she uses as background to the stronger colours. Fourth, as every flower painter must, she uses white in great quantity, requiring unusual skill even in oils, and very hard indeed to get right in watercolour. Fifth, she brings different flowers together but with judicious restraint and reticence, thus echoing nature but avoiding the floral jungles of many painters who do not know when to stop putting things in. Finally she makes skilful use of non-floral verticals edges of tables and windows, patterned wallpaper and curtain edges — to provide contrast to the curves and sway of her subjects. The result is astonishingly pleasing.
These are the kind of pictures which make you glad to get up in the morning to catch your first glimpse of them and rejoice again that they are in your possession and adorn your house. They are full of sunshine and clear light, they radiate optimism and confidence and make the key point that flowers, whether in the earth or on the wall, are an essential ingredient of happiness. Huysum made this point in his day, and Girvan now makes it again, ravishingly, in ours. What more can a painter do?
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