Monday, July 8, 2024

Plucked Flowers

Willem van Aelst
Vase of Flowers
1651
oil on panel
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Albert André
Interior with Flowers
ca. 1920
oil on cardboard
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Léon Bonvin
Goblet with Violets
1863
watercolor and gouache
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Rodolphe-Théophile Bosshard
Still Life with Tulips
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

Albertus Jonas Brandt
Nasturtiums
ca. 1813-18
watercolor
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Adolphe Braun
Flower Study
ca. 1854
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Henri-Fantin Latour
Flowers and Fruit
1866
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Roger Fenton
Fruit and Flowers
1860
albumen print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

William George Gillies
Still Life with Roses
ca. 1943
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

John La Farge
Flowers on a Windowsill
ca. 1861
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jacob Marrel
Bowl of Flowers
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

Adolphe Monticelli
Vase of Wild Flowers
ca. 1870-80
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Odilon Redon
Vase of Flowers
ca. 1916
pastel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Gerhard Richter
Lilies
2000
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Rachel Ruysch
Flowers in a Glass Vase
1700
oil on canvas
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Paul-Désiré Trouillebert
Bouquet of Violets
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Composition
 
       for John Berger

Courbet might have painted this
gigantic head: heavy, yellow
petal-packed bloom of the chrysanthemum.

He would have caught the way
the weight of it looms from the cheap-green
vase this side the window it lolls in.

But he would have missed the space
triangled between stalk and curtain
along a window-frame base.

The opulence of the flower
would have compelled him to ignore
the ship-shape slotted verticals

of the door in the house beyond
dwarfed by the wand of the stem;
and the gate before it would not

have echoed those parallels to his eye
with its slatted wood, its two
neat side-posts of concrete.

The triangle compacts the lot: there
is even room in it for the black
tyre and blazing wheel-hub of a car

parked by the entrance. But the eye
of Courbet is glutted with petals
as solid as meat that press back the sky.

– Charles Tomlinson (1969)