"Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop," Rachel Ruysch, 1716.

Rachel Ruysch's still lifes are always worth revisiting. I've talked about her before, so I won't repeat myself, except to say the basics: She was a painter of florals and still lifes who was enormously popular and charged high prices in her lifetime, and is also the best-documented female artist of her time, thanks her to habit of adding her age to her signature on all her paintings. She is regarded as one of the greatest still life artists of all time.

Here we have a lovely bouquet with roses, pansies, irises, calendula, dianthus, and others, with a few insects buzzing about or landing on the petals. Her father was a teacher of anatomy and botany, so she learned to look at flowers and insects closely and examine their structure, to recreate them realistically on the canvas.

A perfect painting for Flower Friday!

From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Our white fruit quince are flowering.

https://www.pictorem.com/2321121/White%20Pink%20Quince%20with%20Raindrops.html

@photography #photography #FloralFriday #FlowerFriday

Thought I'd share some vintage pink petals today, happy Friday!
Available here..https://tina-lecour.pixels.com/featured/vintage-pink-petals-tina-lecour.html

#Spring has already officially arrived in #Krakow.

"Rum Row," Frederick Judd Waugh, 1922.

This is a fairly off-the-beaten-track painting for Waugh (1861-1940), who was known mostly as a marine painter. His seascapes are still admired today.

The son of portraitist Samuel Waugh, he had the best education and lives mostly abroad, painting seascapes. He returned to the US in 1908 where he went from New Jersey to Maine to Provincetown, MA. He also did illustration work for periodicals, and was hired by the Navy to design camouflage for ships.

Most interestingly, he published a number of fairy tales with American settings. He was deeply interested in folklore and the supernatural, and sought to create a New World fairy tradition for young readers.

But today we have some lovely irises in empty old rum bottles. These probably were considered trash in his day....now they're valued collectibles!

Happy Flower Friday!

Plumbago auriculata, also known as blue plumbago, or sky flower.

Some pretty spring bluebirds for Friday, have a good one!
Available here..https://tina-lecour.pixels.com/featured/a-pair-of-spring-bluebirds-tina-lecour.html

"Basket of Roses," Henri Biva, 1891.

Biva (1848-1929) was a Realist/Naturalist painter of landscapes and the occasional still life. His work is recognizable for a degree of realism and attention to detail that prefigures the photorealism that would rise in the late 20th century.

I once showed one of his landscapes to a friend, who gazed at it for ages, then said, "You can almost HEAR that painting," as in it was easy to imagine the calls of birds and buzzing of insects. It was as if one could step through the frame into a lovely, but realistic, scene.

His attention to detail, his skill as a colorist, and his ability to depict natural light and make it LOOK natural on the canvas, are remarkable to me. He is scandalously overlooked and deserves greater attention....a lot of his work may not look like much at a glance (views of meadows or wooded glades or the shore of a pond or creek) but reward your attention with their amazing detail and realism. Go look him up.

Happy Flower Friday!

From a private collection.

My Thanksgiving cactus is blooming for, I dunno, Spring? My Easter cactus in the background has started pushing out tiny little flower buds so maybe that one will stick to the schedule. Meanwhile, my Christmas cactus is likely dead (not pictured, not pretty).

"Cottage Garden," Gustav Klimt, 1903-07.

It's Flower Friday! Today I've got a lovely scene from Gustav Klimt, who I've featured often. Although technically Art Nouveau, this scene is almost Abstract in its pile of riotous colors against a background of green. This isn't any kind of realist botanical work...this is COLOR.

In fact, it's almost a dream image, the perfect garden to relax in...

Happy Friday!

From a private collection.

I swear the #ranunculus look more like artificial flowers than anything I've ever grown.

I like 'em. Can't wait to see the rest of the buds open.

"Right Hand of the Girl with Carnation," Wilhelm Leibl, 1880.

Leibl (1844-1900) was a German Realist painter of portraits and scenes of peasant life. He was noted for not doing any preliminary drawing, but simply wading in with his paints, which could create problems...of which this canvas is a result.

This is actually a section of a larger painting, "Girl with Carnation," but as Leibl was so intense in painting in as much meticulous detail as possible without preliminary drawing, he ended up throwing off his proportions and he could lose track of the dimensional relationships. The finished work, basically, had too many focal points and fell apart. So, in a act of artistic integrity, he cut up the canvas, with the girl's left hand, head, and a section of the bodice still surviving.

A good example of the whole being less than the sum of its parts, eh? It works well on its own, though.

Happy Flower Friday!

From the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany.

"Still Life with Flowers," Rachel Ruysch, 18th century.

I've talked about Ruysch before, but to recap quickly, she was the best-documented woman painter of her time, with an enormously successful career, getting commissions from many wealthy and influential clients. Poets wrote elegies in honor of her death in 1750, and despite the fact that she specialized in florals, her work was highly praised and fetched high prices after her passing; she even outsold Rembrandt!

The daughter of a scientist and professor of botany, Ruysch depicted plants and flowers with meticulous detail, developing her own style that straddled the line between Baroque and Rococo. Even today, she is regarded as one of the most talented still life artists of all time, bar none.

Happy Flower Friday!

From the Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm.