Earthly Delights

When you look at this painting, you are overwhelmed by its richness and complexity, by so much visual delight packed into one work.  Yet, amazingly, this work also speaks to developments in science, commerce, politics, and religion – all through the medium of flowers.

First of all, as any gardener recognizes, these flowers do not bloom at the same time, and thus the painting represents a compression of seasons within the garden. When Brueghel was painting, he may have had access to a new visual resource … the Florilegium, a book illustrating living ornamental plants. The science of botany – the study of plants – was emerging as distinct from the study of medicine, and for the first time in Europe plants were being studied for their beauty rather than simply for their usefulness.

It is no coincidence that this appreciation of floral beauty follows the extraordinary enrichment of the European plant palette with recent imports from both the New World (such as the Tagetes, now ironically known as African marigolds) and from the Near East (including the scarlet turk’s-cap lilies, or Lilium chalcedonicum, and – above all – the tulips).

As early as 1562 the tulip was documented in the Flemish city of Antwerp, home of the Brueghels. And it was largely Flemish growers that fueled ‘tulipomania’, the Dutch financial speculation in breeding bulbs that crashed spectacularly in the 1630s. Brueghel painted this work while the tulip speculation was on the upswing, yet through the occasional wilting bloom and scattered petals he suggests the vanity and frailty of earthly things. And this spiritual appeal is reinforced by the prominence of flowers with strong linkages to the Counter Reformation:  the white Madonna lilies, roses, and irises were all emblems of the Virgin Mary, while the anemones, viola, and red lilies represented the Passion of Christ.

All these layers of meaning within this near tactile beauty of paint …

Is this a work that makes any sense to you, botanically speaking? Is this a landscape that you recognize?  What is going on here?

First of all, the grapes. Although one of the native North American grapevines does grow in Québec, the Vitis riparia produces small dark fruit that is more attractive to birds than to humans. It has been used to create hardy hybrids, including Baco Noir and Maréchal Foch grapes. What we are viewing in this painting is a depiction of European Vitis vinifera, which by all reports was not cultivated in 19th century Québec.

We know of Légaré’s practice of copying artworks: the image of the grapes was taken from an Italian painting from his collection. He then superimposed it on an imaginary landscape. And that may be why the vegetation gives us pause:  some of the vaguely palmate foliage suggests maple trees, but the spiky plant in the left foreground has the substance of a semi-tropical succulent.

In both classical and Christian times, the grapevine has religious associations. Let’s consider the composition through a spiritual lens, and perhaps we can consider the work as an aspirational landscape.

Renowned as a painter of flowers, and particularly roses, Henri Fantin-Latour was recognized in the late 19th century by the naming of a light pink Centifolia rose in his honour – a rose that is still in cultivation today.

Fantin-Latour’s career coincided with developments in rose breeding. Perhaps stimulated by the Empress Josephine’s famous rose garden at Malmaison, rosarians sought to enrich the beauty and fragrance of old roses with the recurring bloom characteristic of the less hardy roses from China. This Bouquet of Roses was painted in 1885, eighteen years after what is recognized as the introduction of the first modern rose.  While the form of the fully open blossoms in the painting indicates the fullness and relative flat configuration of old roses, the partially open roses in the middle and right hand side of the canvas have the high-centered configuration that we associate with Hybrid Tea Roses, the modern cross between Hybrid Perpetuals and Tea Roses. Although plant identification from a painting is always suspect, I venture that the dark red rose at the centre may be the old rose known as “Tuscany Superb”.

In traditional still-life painting the image of the flower lying beside is the vase is meant to reinforce the transience of earthly beauty. With this work Fantin-Latour captures the ephemeral beauty of the roses so that we can enjoy them in perpetuity.

I would like to thank the artist for titling this charming work Buttercups, because otherwise I would have been deep in pursuit of what botanists call a “d.y.c.” – which stands for “damned yellow compositae”. The world is full of small yellow flowers, that are usually members of the Sunflower family, or Compositae, and when pressed for a plant identification, even the most learned scientist has been known to mutter, “Clearly, it’s a d.y.c.”

And this would have been unfair to McNicoll’s painting, as buttercups are not Compositae, but are part of the Ranunculaceae (known as the buttercup or crowfoot family). The common buttercup, or Ranunculus acris, remains a flower of the fields and meadows, and in gardens we usually see the Florists’ Ranunculus (R. asiaticus), a tender tuber that produces double flowers in hues from hot pink to orange to deep red.

From the date of the painting, I am assuming that it is set in England, although buttercups have now naturalized throughout North America. In Alberta they have been declared a noxious weed poisonous to livestock, and caution should be taken that children and pets do not eat them. The sap can also irritate the skin, leading to speculation that pressing a buttercup to your chin “to see if you like butter” can lead to a slight redness.

And none of these concerns are apparent in McNicoll’s idyllic painting of mother and child … or are they?

I smile whenever I look at this painting. I note that the artist called it Decoration, not Garden – and I would not expect to see its likeness in anyone’s back yard. Yet to me it is a visual transcription of the delight that I can experience in looking at individual blooms, or noticing how the fronds of a fern curve against the bells of a foxglove.  (At least I think it is a foxglove – Digitalis purpurea albiflora – but I could be wrong.)

This work also evokes my personal love of the all-white garden. Particularly for those of us who work during the day, we can so appreciate coming home at dusk or later to the cool clarity of the white blooms and the evening fragrance of the Nicotiana, among others that attract night pollinators. And the very 1930s feel of the painting also reminds me of one of the great gardens in the world: the White Garden at Sissinghurst Castle.

For the artist, I sense that this was to some extent a technical exercise, working with a restricted colour palette, specific shapes, and a defined border – but isn’t this close to the definition of making any garden?

A life-long resident of Winnipeg, LeMoine FitzGerald’s love of the prairie was born during summers at this grandparents’ farm outside Snowflake, Manitoba (south-west of Winnipeg, just north of the American border). Viewers who know only the stereotype of the flat monochromatic prairies might be surprised by this painting’s colours and contours.

My first plant identification was the brown seedhead in the centre of the canvas, which I tentatively labelled Dipsacus fullonum, the non-native common teasel which has established itself throughout North America.  Wrestling with the foreshortened perspective and stylized foliage, I took the image to a colleague for consultation on the plant material.  He responded, “I see a penis and a vulva.”

This gives the title, Prairie Fantasy, a whole new meaning.  For many of us, our first exposure to sexual reproduction (as opposed to vegetative reproduction, which is the alternative in horticulture) was not the birds and the bees, but rather the flower’s stamens and pistils. Throughout history flowers have been used symbolically, and in the twentieth century Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings have set the standard for celebratory sexuality.

Does this interpretation malign the artist’s intentions?  I think not, since it was a gift from the artist to a woman with whom he was in a relationship at the time. However, it has certainly led me to look at the painting with fresh and appreciative eyes.