Date : 1722
Material : Oil on canvas
| Item 14 on 16
European Painting
Painting (Still Life)
Area related
Neitherlands
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In this work, flowers from all times of year -roses, anemones, hyacinths, and tulips, among others- have been painted directly from life. Van Huysum's painstaking application of multiple layers of thin oil glazes captures the brilliant colors and delicate textures of the petals. His vivid greens, however, were fugitive; here the leaves have faded to blue. Because he insisted on only painting each kind of flower while it was in season, it sometimes took the artist years to complete a picture.
Jan van Huysum, the eldest son of Justus van Huysum the Elden, is one of the most prominent of all Dutch flower painters. Jan and his youngest brothers, Justus the Younger, Jacob and Michiel van Huysum, all followed in their father's footsteps and became flower painters. Jan, however, was far more successful than his brothers.
He acquired enormous fame, selling his pictures for astronomically high prices to courts all over Europe. People were prepared to pay several thousand guilders for one of Van Huysum's still-life pieces. Among his customers were Louis XIV, Charles of Austria, the English Prime Minister and the Duke of Mecklenburgh. Van Huysum came to be known as the "Phoenix of Flower Painters".
His paintings after 1720 reveal a more exuberant style, marked by asymmetrical compositions against a much lighter background. He gave his paintings a certain exuberance and abundance by using light, pastel-like colours, striving for a primarily decorative effects. Van Huysum was secretive about his painting technique, because he feared that someone might imitate his methods supposedly different from those practised by early Dutch still-life painters. Now we know that his materials were not much different from those of his colleagues. He was one of the first in the Netherlands to use newly introduced some new pigments. But the real difference was in the change from a dark background to a lighter one. His transparent or translucent paints had a luminosity, that could not be obtained in any other way.
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