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| Georg Flegel Frankfurter Rose ca. 1630 watercolor and gouache on paper Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| John La Farge Wreath of Flowers 1866 oil on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Gaston Lecreux Flowers ca. 1880 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
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| Valdemar Schönheyder-Möller Flowering Evening Primrose 1893 oil on canvas Skagens Museum, Denmark |
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| Childe Hassam Giant Magnolias 1904 oil on canvas Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
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| Anonymous German Maker Tulips ca. 1905 printed, embossed and die-cut wallpaper border Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| George Lambert Pan is Dead (Still Life) 1911 oil on canvas Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
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| Paul Poiret for Atelier Martine Bluette ca. 1912 screenprinted cotton-linen textile Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Georgia O'Keeffe The White Calico Flower 1931 oil on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Anonymous American Maker Magnolias ca. 1935-45 machine-printed wallpaper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Hermann Dudley Murphy Peonies and Deer 1940 oil on canvas New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut |
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| Anonymous American Maker Rose Sprays ca. 1948 machine-printed wallpaper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous American Maker Lilac Time 1949 machine-printed wallpaper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| David Lance Goines Chez Panisse Twenty-Fifth Anniversary 1996 offset-lithograph (poster) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Jean Crane Endangered Garden II (Peonies) 2005 watercolor on paper Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin |
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| Hitoshi Ujiie Branch 2006 digital inkjet print on silk Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Jennifer Dickson Eucryphia, Milton Lodge 2013 inkjet print Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario |
18 August 1943
This morning I went into Tonbridge to get a manuscript typed, and on the way home I saw Prince Belosselsky walking on the pavement. He was dressed all in a thin flowing suit of some smooth khaki material. He wore old, beautifully polished brown and white co-respondent shoes and a sort of drooping, rather pointed trilby hat that he always affects. There was such an extraordinary and studied air of elegance about him that I was quite taken aback, and almost began to wonder if he would care to know me without my coat on and riding a bicycle. I gave him a quick daring smile and then looked away; but he called out in a loud voice, "Hullo!" It was a mixture of so many things, but chiefly it was a rather boisterous welcome. I felt that perhaps he might almost want to stop and talk, but I jumped on to my bicycle after giving one more look at his receding back. The sweep and sway, the curious lilting and at the same time padding gait, sort of imperial waddle, the feet pointed outwards and the head held stiffly like a wired carnation; the flowing clothes, the jacket very long, the trousers narrow, the soap-stone, rather esquimau face with many wrinkles and hawk eyes, all together held a fascination for me. Here was somebody not at all clever, rather foolish perhaps, who yet could create this interesting effect. There was snobbery in every movement and line, but also care, thought, discrimination, idealism and beauty. Yes, the image left in the mind was beautiful. I kept thinking as I rode away that that old, poor and probably ill man had made of himself, by endless contriving, a thing of beauty. It seemed very noble and heroic to me, to be over seventy, exiled, completely alone, with hardly any money, and yet to take this endless care with one's appearance. I realized at once that it is his only means of expression, but who is to see and who is to care? That is what seemed sad, that there was nobody to give their attention to this extraordinary relic. I would like to go to him and ask him questions and write a book about the Russia he remembers.
26 October 1945
I walked down to the cinema, and just as I passed it I saw old Prince Belosselsky swaying with his fantastic other century walk up the step. He too wore a slouch cap and a long coat, with such a dignity and pomposity that they almost might have been crown and robe in Madame Tussaud's. I have never known anyone with this walk before. And his stranded figure bit into me too – to think of its sitting wearily through the film alone with its past stretching out behind it like a sheet of never-ending woolly tripe. To be stifled in one's tripe.
– from The Journals of Denton Welch (who was born in 1915, gravely injured in 1935, then wrote the journals between 1942 and his early death in 1948), edited by Michael De-la-Noy (1984)