As With Other Forms of Art the Art of Arranging Flowers or Floral Art

"Fine art is the Bloom": Floral Stories from the American Art Collection

"Fine art is the Blossom—Life is the Dark-green Leaf. Let every creative person strive to make his flower a beautiful living affair, something that volition convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious, more beautiful—more than lasting than life itself." —Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1902)

Throughout art history, flowers take been a favorite field of study for artists, designers, and artisans. Aside from the obvious beauty of blossoms and petals, many floral subjects contain within them additional layers of symbolism and significance. The American art collection features a number of floral pictures connected to artists' personal stories of adventure, ambition, and inspiration. From personal images of daily life and quiet reflection to global influences and international journeys, these five paintings reflect the rich variety of floral stories that can be establish in the permanent collection galleries at the de Young museum.

Charles Caryl Coleman, Azaleas and Apple Blossoms (1879)

Azaleas and Apple tree Blossoms (1879) is one of about fifteen large-scale Aesthetic nevertheless lifes that Charles Caryl Coleman (1840—1928) painted throughout his career. The inventive, attenuated format of the limerick recalls a Chinese or Japanese hanging whorl, and this stark verticality elegantly exaggerates the elongation of the azalea branches, stretching upward and bursting into corrupt clusters organized with the frail disproportion of ikebana, the Japanese art of blossom arrangement. This ascensional quality is counterbalanced by the 2 vessels firmly grounded on the table. The deep red of the stout jardinière contrasts with the white petals of the azaleas, while the pink apple tree blossoms are set off by the lustrous glaze of their Chinese vase. The vase recalls the so-called "Chinamania" of the 1870s, when Coleman's fellow Aesthetes, such as James McNeill Whistler, popularized the taste for collecting blue-and-white porcelain in the West. The richly busy vase in Coleman'due south still life features a deer, a symbol of longevity, presenting a stark dissimilarity with the fleeting lifespan of azaleas and apple blossoms.

Charles Caryl Coleman, "Azaleas and Apple Blossoms," 1879. Oil on sail, 71 1/4 x 25 in. (181 x 63.5 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum buy, Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Income Fund, souvenir of Barbro and Bernard Osher, J. Burgess & Elizabeth Jamieson Endowment Fund, and bequest of William A. Stimson, 2008.9

Coleman was respected past his late 19th-century contemporaries as a leading painter of decorative withal lifes. Born in Buffalo, New York, Coleman left the United States for Europe after serving in the Union Army during the Ceremonious War. He lived in Rome from the late 1860s through the mid-1880s, becoming an active fellow member of the urban center's creative expatriate community. His studio on Rome'south Via Margutta became known for its displays of rare and exotic objects and textiles, from antique pottery and Japanese fans to Chinese lacquer bowls and colorful maiolica vases. One contemporary author for Lippincott'south Magazine described Coleman's studio equally "picturesque," while another contributor for the Roman News compared it to "a scene from a fairy play [filled with] antique tapestries and medieval paintings and brass lamps and rich oriental rugs, which the magician Coleman has managed to join."[one]

Itō Jakuchū, "White Plum Blossoms and Moon," 1755. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, 55 3/8 × 31 1/iv in. (140.6 ten 79.4 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015, 2015.300.213

The rich, varied contents of Coleman'due south studio represented the material dimensions of the artist'southward alignment with the international Aesthetic Motion, which united practitioners across literature and the fine arts who venerated beauty and sought to find harmony between art, nature, and domestic spaces. Azaleas and Apple Blossoms exemplifies the ways in which artists and writers of the Artful Movement inventively combined elements of Western and non-Western culture, engaging in an extended dialogue betwixt the Eastward and Due west, past and present.

Martin Johnson Heade, Orchid and Hummingbird (ca. 1885)

Orchid and Hummingbird (ca. 1885) demonstrates the remarkable ability of Martin Johnson Head (1819—1904) to dramatically alloy the tropical landscape with still life. In this relatively compact composition, a sweeping view of a tropical trunk of h2o fills the groundwork, giving focus and attention to the dramatic orchid and tiny bird in the foreground. Heade gives preference to the modest over the major, creating a heightened sense of drama and wonder. While the pairing of flowers and birds had been a exercise long established in the history of ornithological illustration, Heade's images of birds interacting with such dazzling floral varieties as this pink Cattleya orchid are distinguished past the artist'south distinctive presentation of this subject.

Martin Johnson Heade, "Orchid and Hummingbird," ca. 1885. Oil on canvass, fifteen 1/8 ten twenty 1/4 in. (38.4 10 51.4 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Souvenir of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, 1979.7.49

Heade had long been interested in hummingbirds: "A few years afterward my starting time advent in this breathtaking earth, I was attacked by the all-absorbing hummingbird craze, and it has never left me since."[iii] His dedication to the subject was confirmed in 1863 when he traveled to Brazil for the first time. Heade may have been initially encouraged to make this first journey past his friend Frederic Edwin Church, who worked in a neighboring studio in the famed Tenth Street Studio Edifice in New York City. Church traveled to S America in 1853 and 1857, and sketches from these trips provided a reference for works such as The Heart of the Andes (1859), one of the virtually popular paintings of the era.

Church building's success with such sweeping tropical landscapes likely inspired Heade's three Key and South American adventures betwixt 1863 and 1870, which took him to Brazil, Colombia, Panama, and Jamaica. During these excursions he depicted the tropical scenery, flowers, and birds he encountered, and he initially pursued an ambitious project of his own pattern: a grand, illustrated catalogue of hummingbirds entitled The Gems of Brazil, which was never completed. Heade aimed to document the seemingly endless multifariousness of hummingbirds whose iridescent feathers resembled gems or jewels. He painted these modest, fluttering creatures from life, creating inventive compositions that depicted these birds surrounded by lush tropical landscapes.

James Forbes, "Humming Birds of the Brasils," 1765. Illustration from James Forbes, "Oriental Memoirs: selected and abridged from a series of familiar messages written during seventeen years residence in India: including observations on parts of Africa and South America, and a narrative of occurrences in four India voyages." London: Printed for the writer past T. Bensley, 1813. Natural History Museum Library, London

Information technology was during his first trip in 1863 that Heade about likely saw orchids in the wild for the start fourth dimension. Afterwards making his 3rd and final trip in 1870, when he traveled to Colombia, Panama, and Jamaica, Heade returned to New York City, where he continued to pigment hummingbirds and orchids from memory, referencing the many studies he completed abroad. He utilized his experiences to design such small, lavish works as Orchid and Hummingbird, which he set up against exotic backdrops and sumptuous leaf. He continued to produce these tropical pictures into his later years, forever entranced by these exotic birds and blossoms.

Nicolai Fechin, Flower Girl (1936)

Russian American artist Nicolai Fechin'southward Flower Daughter (1936) presents a strong instance of the creative person's empathetic portraits animated past virtuosic colour thickly layered with a palette pocketknife. Fechin conflated realism and brainchild, drawing out certain specific details, such as the woman's smiling confront, while other passages appear every bit spirited and more abstract gestures. The background of the composition includes a realistic depiction of a trajinera, a small boat used to carry goods across canals, about often establish on the picturesque canals of Xochimilco in Mexico City—an area that also boasts a famous flower market. In the foreground, the young woman holds bouquets of vibrant flowers, their deep gold and rich violet tones suggestive of daffodils and irises. Fechin'due south penchant for realistic portraiture and precise details contrast with the expressive, abstract blossoms, creating dramatic tension and riots of color.

Nicolai Fechin, "Blossom Daughter," ca. 1936. Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in. (101.half dozen x 81.iii cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of the Family of Ethel and Raymond Kelner, 2001.198

Fechin was praised early in his career for his "savage, excellent, and heterogeneous" canvases. His early artistic training in Russia academies instilled in him a realistic and disciplined approach to the figure, while his technique was direct and boundless, verging on the abstruse. Early on, he exhibited his piece of work internationally and attracted the attention of American collectors who sought to bring him to the U.s.a.. After these efforts were stalled by the Russian Revolution in 1917, he finally arrived in New York City in 1923. In 1927, his family unit moved to Taos, New United mexican states, where he developed a reputation for his vivid portraits. Fechin settled in Los Angeles six years later.

Departamento de Turismo de la Secretaria de Gobernacion, Mexico. "Xochimilco," ca. 1910–1959. Travel poster. Mexico: Asociacion Mexicana de Turismo (Printed at Offset Galas)

In Los Angeles, Fechin taught classes on Saturday afternoons in his secluded canyon studio. In 1936, he traveled to Mexico with a pocket-size group of students on a vi-month painting tour of Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Oaxaca (where he met Diego Rivera). Amongst the grouping was Katherine Benepe Shackleford, who afterward recalled that "the sources of supply for materials were fair only; in the south, nothing . . . Artists in the area found other supplies for united states of america."[3] Despite any shortages of art supplies, Fechin made sketches and took hundreds of photographs documenting the people he encountered on the trip—peradventure this smiling flower seller among them.

Florine Stettheimer, Still Life with Flowers (1921)

Florine Stettheimer'southward (1871–1944) Yet Life with Flowers (1921) offers a compelling example of the artist's inimitable approach to floral subjects. A confident divergence from realism, Still Life with Flowers depicts an arrangement overflowing with fragrant, eye-catching phlox. Attending is paid not to the individual flowers, but to the sensation of viewing the boutonniere as one joyous ensemble. Stettheimer called her floral still-lifes "eyegays," a discussion she derived from the term "nosegay" to convey her view that these paintings were intended to delight the heart. Her friend, the fine art critic Henry McBride, wrote in 1946, "Her colors instantly forgot they came from the paint-box and took on the tints of the flowers. When she painted flowers she was never literal in her descriptions of them. . . . the blossoms in her vases wriggled upwardly with a whimsicality in the stems."[four]

Florine Stettheimer, "Yet Life with Flowers," 1921. Oil on sail, 25 3/four ten 29 5/8 in. (65.4 x 75.ii cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Souvenir of Miss Ettie Stettheimer to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1955.24

Stettheimer lived in a rarefied world of beauty and creativity. Together with her sisters, Carrie and Ettie she socialized with gimmicky artists, writers, and bons vivants at the exhibitions and intellectual salons they hosted at their 1000 apartment on 58th Street in New York City. There, the "Stetties" mingled with such illustrious guests as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz. The sisters never married, and their family'southward fiscal security immune each to wholly devote herself to artistic pursuits: Carrie was a talented miniaturist, Ettie a author, and Florine a painter.

Multiple flower arrangements visible throughout Florine Stettheimer'southward Bryant Park studio (in the groundwork: "Portrait of My Sister, Ettie Stettheimer," 1923). Peter A. Juley & Son, Florine Stettheimer's studio, Bryant Park, New York. Black-and-white study impress, eight x ten in. (20.3 10 25.iv cm). Smithsonian American Fine art Museum, Athenaeum and Special Collections

Relieved from the pressures of selling her work, Stettheimer's creative do remained a individual pursuit. Her paintings describe family, close friends, favorite places, and dreamlike settings—appraised as a group, her body of work suggests a coded, personal mythology. Between her tender portraits and pageants of Manhattan life, Stettheimer painted arresting floral all the same lifes in her distinctive candy-hued palette. These bouquets have deep biographical significance, equally Stettheimer took swell pleasance in arranging bouquets for her ain enjoyment. Contemporary photographs of her Bryant Park studio (above) show multiple vases of blossom arrangements placed throughout the infinite. Stettheimer'due south birthday bouquets were especially noteworthy: her annual altogether ritual involved picking a bouquet of seasonal flowers—an event she would note in her journals and paint for posterity.

In her poem "Revolt of the Violet," Stettheimer provides boosted insight into her empathetic identification with flowers, which she imbues with their own consciousness: "This is a vulgar historic period / Sighed the violet / Why must humans drag us / Into their lightheaded lives / They care for us / As attributes / As symbols / And make united states / Fade— / Stink."[5]

Georgia O'Keeffe, Petunias (1925)

Petunias (1925) was inspired past a patch of purple petunias that Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) first planted at Lake George in New York's Adirondack region in the summer of 1925, and this is 1 of a dozen works of various sizes and perspectives that were inspired past those plants. This work is the near elaborate in the series: featuring half dozen blossoms posed at different angles and at various stages of blooming, information technology evokes the motion of a unmarried flower through space and time. O'Keeffe'due south magnified flowers fill the canvas, touching every edge of the picture without directional orientation, each petal blithe with velvety textures and well-baked contours.

Alfred Steiglitz, O'Keeffe and Davidson pruning in orchard, 1920. Photograph, 9 ten 11.nine cm. Yale University, Beinecke Library, Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O'Keeffe annal, 10050253

From 1918 to 1934, O'Keeffe made regular visits with Alfred Stieglitz to his family's property on Lake George, which became her retreat from the bustle of New York City and a source of lasting inspiration. There she constitute abundant orchards and bloom beds—nonetheless-life subjects were all around her, literally ripe for picking. O'Keeffe collected the flowers, fruits, and leaves that caught her eye. Working with her friend, chief gardener Donald Davidson, she also selected plants for the garden and tended the fruit trees and flowers around the Stieglitz estate.

Georgia O'Keeffe, "Petunias," 1925. Oil on hardboard, 18 x 30 in. (45.7 ten 76.2 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, gift of the Thou. H. de Immature Family, 1990.55

Even so-life painting had long been central to O'Keeffe's artistic do: as a pupil in William Merritt Chase's classes at the Fine art Students League, she was expected to paint a still life every mean solar day in accelerate of a weekly critique. This experience likely heightened the sense of observation that characterizes O'Keeffe's intense exploration of the color and texture of these vibrant petunias, while the immense scale of each blossom bridges the divide between representation and abstraction.

O'Keeffe's atypical view of the natural world redefined modern art, and her monumental depictions of fruit and flowers affirmed her distinctive relationship with her surround: "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say whatsoever other style . . . things I had no words for."

Text by Lauren Palmor, assistant curator, American art. Learn more nigh American art at the de Young. More Virtual Bouquets to Art here.
For more online offerings, visit our Museum from Abode page.

Notes and Sources Cited:

[1] Margaret Bertha Wright, "Gigi'due south: A Cosmopolitan Art School." Lippincott's Magazine, vol. 27 (Jan 1880), 10. Author for the Roman News, 1883, quoted in Adrienne Baxter Bell, "Charles Caryl Coleman on Capri," The Magazine Antiques, November 2005, 142.
[2] Heade quoted in Robert George McIntyre, Martin Johnson Heade (New York: Pantheon Press, 1948), eleven; and Theodore East. Stebbins, Janet L. Comey, and Karen Eastward. Quinn, The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Disquisitional Analysis and Catalogue Raisonne (New Haven, CT: Yale University Printing, 2000).
[3] Letter of the alphabet from Katherine Benepe Shackleford to Mary North. Balcomb. Mary Due north. Balcomb, Nicolai Fechin (Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1975), 124–half-dozen.
[4] Henry McBride, Florine Stettheimer (New York: The Museum of Mod Art, 1946), 15–16.
[5] Florine Stettheimer, "The Revolt of the Violet," northward.d. Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. Florine and Ettie Stettheimer papers, Box eight, Binder: Folder 134.

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Source: https://deyoung.famsf.org/Bouquets-to-Art-American-art

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