A moody table for coming out of winter. Dutch Flower Painting 1600-1720 by Paul Taylor is occupying prime real estate on my coffee table lately, with a vase of tulips bending toward it as if the sun.

It is no secret I adore the dutch master’s floral paintings, Rachel Ruysch and Daniel Seghers not being a comprehensive list but often being a guiding light. I quite adore how the Dutch know how to work with the dark. Black becomes embodied and your drawn to its contrasting way almost as if it plays the role of a highlight. It is very interesting to me how people work with shadow, with contrast, and make it stand up next to color. On these style of style life’s, many of these artists shared a disapproval of pictures containing too much:

“Too many objects spread over the panel or canvas dilute the viewer’s attention, and diminish the visual force and impact of the work. Said Lairesse ‘It is easy to understand that many small objects placed together when seen from far off, only cause a swarming before the eyes, and excite little less response from the senses, since there is nothing there to make an impression, or attract the attention’…”

The book itself is beautiful as it features plates of famous floral still life paintings and it dives into history, art theory, and expression. In between the lines it also opens up the tensions between some of these greats– how fine and pure their craft was for capturing the flower essence or spirit (gheest) by fine detail or “netticheyt” vs. who’s stroke was ridden with nervousness, loose brush work leaving technique rather naked on the canvas.

Paintings by Rachel Ruysch

Even if the art theory doesn’t capture you, the high drama of Tulip Mania might. In the early 1630s, the tulip bulb trade exploded, with some varieties fetching over the cost of a canal house. Being both a floral design and realtor, it’s funny to imagine these worlds colliding, while unimaginable given the valuation of those particular goods in today’s market, still an interesting study for these sort of economic crises…

To tulips and art

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