Working among flowers: floral still-life painting in nineteenth-century France

Abstract

"Working Among Flowers explores the infusion of new spirit and meaning into the traditional genre of floral still-life painting in 19th-century France, even as the advent of modernism was radically transforming the art world. This beautiful book features works by more than 30 artists, including well-known painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet, and Paul Cézanne as well as less familiar figures such as Antoine Berjon and Simon Saint-Jean. Insightful essays reveal the emerging dialogue between the floral still life, botanical illustration, and models of science; the critical context for instruction in and reception of flower painting; the misunderstood relationship between avant-garde flower painting and the market; the cultural meanings of the vases and ceramic vessels depicted by painters; and the literary context for flower painting."--

Contents

Information and Illusion : Botany and Painting at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century / Heather MacDonald -- The Path to the Modern Floral Still Life : Academy to Avant-Garde / Mitchell Merling -- Impressionist Flower Paintings and the Market / Sylvie Patry -- Ceramic Containers in French Nineteenth-Century Flower Painting / Audrey Gay-Mazuel -- Flowers in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry : A Time to Bloom, a Time to Die / Olivier Meslay.