Details

Object type

painting

Title

Still Life, Flowers in a Terracotta Urn

Artist/Maker

Jan van Huysum artist

Culture/School

Dutch

Place Associated

Holland, Amsterdam (place associated)

Date

1727

Materials

oil on canvas

Dimensions

framed: 1854 x 1380 x 120 mm;unframed: 1575 mm x 1092 mm

Description

There are at least 15 varieties of flowers included within this vase, including peony, blue iris, tulip, carnations and morning glory. The flowers blossom at different times of the year, never together, making this an arrangement that is not actually possible. The large vase, decorated with playful cherubs, stands atop a marble pedestal.

Van Huysum is one of the most celebrated Dutch flower painters, so famous that a hybrid breed of rose, Rosa Huysumiana, is named after him. His paintings enjoyed particular success after around 1720, due largely to a sudden change in style. Where previously he had painted flower arrangements on a dramatic and dark background, he later started to paint against a lighter background, over a base layer of white. This background shone through the top layers, giving his flowers a greater luminosity. The artist also used brighter and lighter colours for his flowers, and the compositions became more artificial and decorative. This grand, fancy effect appealed to the fashionable and sumptuous ‘rococo’ style of the mid-eighteenth century.

This painting is one of the very largest that van Huysum made. Its grand scale allowed him to demonstrate his ability to use paint freely, with loose brushstrokes. The painting was probably originally hung above a door, and the top corners show evidence that the work was set within a shaped surround, perhaps within carved panelling in a domestic setting. The overall effect would have been quite magnificent.

Van Huysum came from a family of flower painters: he trained with his two brothers, Justus the Younger (c.1684-1707) and Jacob (c.1687-1740) in the workshop of their father, Justus the Elder (1659-1716).

Credit Line/Donor

Archibald McLellan Collection, purchased, 1856

Collection

Archibald McLellan Collection

ID Number

62

Location

Kelvingrove Dutch Art Gallery