Working Among Flowers
Perspectives from The Artist's Road
“[The floral still life] is, I think, an excellent subject to paint.”
- Claude Monet to Frédéric Bazille
Monet was, of course, exactly right about that. He understood that flowers are among the most difficult subjects to capture—far more demanding than landscapes or a still life without them. The task is similar to portraiture with a heavy dose of artistic interpretation and finesse thrown in. To truly create a floral work of art requires immense skill, experience and intense focus and the best examples of the genre are artistic revelations. Whenever we learn about a major exhibition of still life works by the modern masters, we clear our schedules and pack our bags.
Not long ago, we traveled to see a national traveling exhibition, Working Among Flowers - Floral Still Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century France. Among the many wonderful works in the exhibition were paintings by …