Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

A torrent of flowers — peonies, roses, carnations, tulips, tuberoses, hops and auriculas — pours from a terracotta vase on a stone ledge, the blossoms swept into swirling circular rhythms across the panel while peaches and purple and green grapes spill over the ledge, butterflies hover and crawl, and dewdrops catch the light on petals and leaves. Jan van Huysum, whose exuberant bouquets made him the most celebrated flower painter of the eighteenth century, painted this large panel about 1715, filling the entire surface with an opulence that no Dutch predecessor had matched, and he was so secretive about his technique that he forbade his brothers to enter his studio. The panel, long in the Rothschild collection, was acquired by the National Gallery in 1996 through the Patrons’ Permanent Fund with a gift of Philip and Lizanne Cunningham. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.