“Art is much less important than Life, but what a poor life without it.” – Robert Motherwell
Art is enticing, isn’t it? It makes us stop to take a long look and feel feelings that we didn’t realize were within us. Art is elegant, mysterious, fun, simple yet complicated. It could mean different things to different people.
One of the captivating genres of art is ‘Still Life’ which uses manmade or natural objects like fruits, wine, games, etc as the subject of the art. So, when the subject of art is flowers it is called ‘Floral Still Life.’
But what makes Floral still life so special? Let’s discover the answer in this article.
The Beauty of Floral Still Life
Flowers bloom today and die tomorrow. Their beauty is exceptional yet very fleeting. You can arrange a beautiful vase of flowers today but you only have so much time to enjoy it until they start to wither.
While we can only preserve the flowers for so long, we can capture their beauty through a painting for eternity. Artists over centuries have obsessed with painting floral still life.
Back in the seventeenth century Still Life art was considered one of the lowest types of art by the French as it does not have a human subject. But many famous artists like Chardin, Manet, and Van Gogh created brilliant pieces of Still Life art that made them famous and appealing. By the nineteenth century, still life art particularly floral came to be seen at par with other genres.
Why do Artists Prefer to Paint or Sketch Floral Still Life?
You might wonder what is the big deal about painting flowers. You arrange flowers in a vase and paint what you see on a canvas, right? Then why are artists so into painting or sketching Floral still life?
Floral still life is one of the most complicated subjects to paint. Why? Because a flower has so many details to it, its color, texture, depth, the arrangement of the petals, and so on. One has to study all this in the little time the flowers offer them.
It is this fleeting yet deep beauty that captivates the artists. Painting or sketching floral still life is a fulfilling challenge that artists love to take on. Odilon Redon (a Dutch painter) once said, ‘I do not know of anything that has given me more pleasure than such an appreciation of simple flowers in their vase breathing air.’
From mixing color strings in the palette to using the right strokes to capture the texture, painting florals require great focus and expertise. That is why at 1st Art Gallery we are very proud of our artists who create and re-create stunning pieces of Floral still life.
Famous Artists
Rachel Ruysch
One of the few well-known female artists of her time (1700), Rachel Ruysch’s floral paintings is phenomenal. Her whole 60-year painting career was primarily dedicated to painting botanical imagery and we are only thankful for it.
With her unique brilliant style of painting, she captured the elegance of flowers to their minute details. She added elements like crickets, moths, or plums and created asymmetrical compositions that broke the traditions of her time.
Her masterpieces are a must-have for floral still life lovers. You could spend hours looking at the details in her work.
Edouard Manet
Edouard Manet was an influential French painter in the late 1800s. He loved to paint flowers and break the traditional flowers in a vase theme occasionally. This has given us a beautiful series of Floral still life pieces varying from vibrant Peonies In A Vase to this unconventional piece of flowers scattered in a table called Branch of White Peonies and Secateurs.
His brush strokes are wild, free, and dynamic giving a unique aesthetic appeal to it. He spent the last six months of his life creating only floral still lifes!
Odilon Redon
It was not until his 60s did Odilon Rendon discover the sweet addiction of floral still painting. Once he tasted it, he couldn’t get enough of it. That is why most of his paintings after that were florals(the one in the picture is part of his Bouquet in A White Vase series). His earlier works were lithographs often with a grim theme
Odilon Rendon’s paintings are known for the subtle gradient background as opposed to the more detailed ones of his predecessors, adding more focus to the floral subject. What is interesting is his mix of the detailed and abstract rendering of the petals that make the painting more dynamic.
Our artists have created beautiful reproductions of this series for people who wanted to have this masterpiece.
Conclusion
Floral still lifes add beauty to your space that cannot be brought by any other piece. These subtle masterpieces have more to them than what you see at the first glance. You can browse through and purchase the reproductions of the above-mentioned paintings visiting the https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Still-Life.html which is a reservoir of amazing reproduced artworks.