Flowers Throughout The History Of Art
Flowers have been sketched and painted throughout the entire history of art. Not only are they bright and textured, but they've always been an easy-to-find source of subject to depict.
Learn a little about the rich and long history of using flowers in art, below!
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*** Hymn to beauty of God's creation
Fathers of the Church were well aware that painted images have an enormous impact on religious feelings of believers. And despite the austerity of early scenes, Rose and Lily were among the first to receive their special attention.
By depicting flowers in religious scenes, artists showed everlasting beauty of wisdom and generosity of the Creator, and thus, they reminded us of the impermanence of earthly life.
*** Flower Art In Europe
In general, "frivolous" flower painting emerged and spread throughout Europe due to the intensive development of gardening, both scientific and amateur. The flora that surrounded artists began to change from the middle of the 16th century.
Botany gained independence,separating from the medicine, its former parent. So, artists have paid their special attention to floral art. Besides, scientists,most of whom worked in the Netherlands,ordered the plant drawings for research purposes.
*** Floral Portraiture
"Portraits" of flowers were also ordered by gardens' owners to perpetuate strange and exotic or simply beautiful flowers collected or grown by the possessor. Gardeners, occupied by cultivation and breeding of rare species, ordered catalogs with floral drawings to present planting material to their customers.
*** Floral Still-Lifes
The first easel still-lifes emerged in 1600s and were created by Jacob de Gheyn, Roelant Savery, Jan Brueghel, Ambrosias Bosschaert. They showed skillful compositions with various flowers in exquisite vases. Such bouquets seem to be painted from nature, but look closely: they composed from flowers blossoming in different seasons. Painters made detailed drawings in watercolor and gouache from nature, and then used these sketches in their various works.
*** Flowers In Impressionism
Until the 19th century, florals existed somewhere toward the bottom of the painting hierarchy. With grand history paintings regarded as the most prestigious of all art genres, landscapes and still lifes were viewed as lesser subjects BUT French Realists and Impressionists embraced everyday scenes and objects as subjects worthy of art.
Édouard Manet was a leader in this effort and dedicated a remarkable one-fifth of his artistic output to still lifes, boldly claiming that the still life is “the touchstone of painting.” In 1880, nearing the end of his life, Manet focused especially on flowers.
Vincent van Gogh began painting sunflowers for the first time in the summer of 1886, but returned to the subject two years later after inviting the French artist Paul Gauguin to stay with him in his yellow house in Arles. Van Gogh created a series of bright yellow sunflower paintings to decorate Gauguin’s bedroom.
(* Though originally made for Gauguin, van Gogh later took the sunflower as his own personal artistic signature, telling his brother Theo in a letter in 1889 that “the sunflower is mine.”)
*** Georgia O’Keeffe and flowers as modernist form
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment,” Georgia O’Keeffe once said. “I want to give that world to someone else.” Often considered the mother of Modernism, O’Keeffe transformed the still life painting into a radical event. Her close-up views of flowers bordered on abstraction, and challenged viewers to slow down and enjoy the process of careful observation.
O’Keeffe was not the only artist to take a closer look at flowers in the 1920s and ’30s. In California, photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Imogen Cunningham
all turned their lenses on nature, creating large-scale compositions that captured flowers, fruits, and landscapes in sharp detail. Cunningham, in particular, became famous for her black-and-white series of magnolias and calla lilies, which tightly focused on the core forms of each flower.
*** Pop Art Florals
Instead of observing flowers in nature, the pop artist Andy Warhol found his botanical inspiration in a 1964 issue of Modern Photography. There, he discovered a photograph of hibiscus blossoms, which he transformed into a technicolor series of silkscreens that he titled, simply, “Flowers.” (The author of the original photograph, Patricia Caulfield, sued Warhol two years later for the unauthorized use of her image.)
Warhol’s version was so abstracted that critics had a hard time identifying exactly what kind of flowers they depicted.
*** Some Symbols Of Flowers In Art:
- Wilting flowers to capture the fleeting nature of human life.
(In Religious Art):
- Lily is the favorite of ancient rulers and emperors. With the rise of Christianity, its snow-white petals have been entrusted to symbolize the purity of the Virgin Mary.
- Rose: The rose, "The enslaver of heart", has never been deprived of attention. Its deep red color and thorns eloquently narrated the sufferings of Christ.
(In Baroque Art):
- A red carnation once was a symbol of love and suffering, associated with the blood shed by Christ in Christian art.
orchids hide jealousy, suspicion and deceit.
- Iris has already ceased to remind of mourning Mother of God and began to sing hymns to spring and rebirth.
- Lavender symbolizes life at countryside, the peasantry, and, at the same time, desire, sin, lechery, loss of innocence.
- Tulips are transformed into a symbol of wealth, prosperity, trade.
((*As we see, memories of their commercial turbulent past, have offered them new characteristics))
TAKE A LOOK:
The Painting, ‘Ophelia’ As An Example Of How Symbolism Is Used In Art:
Painting "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais is widely known for its detailed depiction of a river’s vegetation and plants on its banks. When painting the doomed Shakespeare’s Ophelia, in a lush death scene the artist showed all flowers with botanical precision following text word by word. Each plant is encoded with a definite meaning...
- Buttercups mean ingratitude
- A weeping willow, bent over a girl, is a sign of rejected love
- A nettle represents pain
- Flowers of daisies around her right hand symbolize innocence.
- Roses traditionally speak of love and beauty. ((Moreover, one of the tragedy’s heroes, called Ophelia a "May rose".))
- A necklace of violets signifies modesty and loyalty, and so do forget-me-nots which grow on the banks.
- An adonis, much alike to a red poppy, floats around the girl’s right hand and symbolizes grief.
(See the painting and learn more here): https://www....phelia-n01506
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