Vase of Flowers

Artist Jan van Huysum (Dutch, 1682 - 1749)

Dateca. 1720

MediumOil on wood panel

DimensionsOverall: 31 × 23 1/2 inches (78.74 × 59.69 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number32-168

Signedl.r., on stone sill: "Jan Van Huysum/ fecit"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionFlower piece in Italianesque bowl, butterflies, bees, and snail. The flowers depicted are tulips, viburnum opulus, Shasta daisy, roses, peonies, primula polyanthus, blue agave, jasminum, papaver sonmiferum, poppies, scabiosa, narcissus, carnations, Japanese iris, larkspur, helianthus divoricatus, and myosotis.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Painters of Still Life, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT., January 25-February 15, 1938, no. 19.

Illusionism and Trompe L'Oeil, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA, May 3-June 26, 1949, unnumbered.

Magic of Flowers in Paintings, Wildenstein and Co., New York, April 13-May 15, 1954, no. 31.

Dutch Painting, The Golden Age, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 28-December 15, 1954; Toledo Museum of Art, January 2-February 12, 1955; Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada, February 19-March 25, 1955, no. 46.

A World of Flowers: Paintings and Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 2-June 9, 1963, unnumbered.

Gallery Label

The 17th-century Dutch were horticultural leaders who introduced Europe to many new species of flowers from their Caribbean and Far Eastern colonies. Huysum gained an international reputation for the technical skill and detailed realism in his sumptuous arrangements of exotic as well as more common specimens. Included here are two rare specimens of tulip (top, left of center), a popular flower originally imported from Constantinople. In the famous market craze of 1637, dubbed Tulipmania, one tulip bulb in Amsterdam was worth the price of a house on a coveted canal lot. The market crashed in 1638, but tulips were still much prized when Huysum painted these blooms a century later.

Provenance

Maximilian Josephe Eugène Auguste Napoléon de Beauharnais, 3rd Duke de Leuchtenberg (1817-1852), Munich, by 1825-1852;

Inherited by his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Nicolaievna de Leuchtenberg (1819-1876), St. Petersburg, 1852-at least 1870;

With D. A. Hoogendijk and Co., Amsterdam, stock no. C.71b, by 1932 [1];

Purchased from Hoogendijk by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.

NOTES:

[1] According to Ramses van Bragt, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, in an email to Meghan Gray, April 7, 2014, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Catalogue des Tableaux de la Galerie de Feu son Altesse Royale Monseigneur Le Prince Eugene Duc de Leuchtenberg a Munich (Munich: La Galerie, 1825), 43.

Johann N. Muxel, Verzeichniss der Bildergallerie S.K.H. des Prinzen Eugen, Herzogs von Leuchtenberg in München (Munich, 1834), 49.

Johann D. Passavant, Galerie Leuchtenberg: Gemälde Sammlung Seiner Kaiserl. Hoheit des Herzogs von Leuchtenberg in München, 2^nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: J. Baer, 1851), 27.

Gustav F. Waagen, Die Gemälde Sammlung in der Kaiserlichen Eremitage zu St. Petersburg nebst Bemerkungen über andere dortige Kunstsammlungen, 2^nd ed. (St. Petersburg: Schmitzdorff, 1870), 389.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 31, (repro.).

The Painters of Still Life (Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1938), unpaginated, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 66.

Illusionism & Trompe L’Oeil (San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1949), 58-59, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3^rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 81, (repro.).

“In the Lowlands: Genius and Realism,” Masterpieces, vol. 1 (Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing, 1950), 64, (repro.).

Dutch Painting, The Golden Age: An Exhibition of Dutch Pictures of the Seventeenth Century ([New York], 1954), unpaginated, (repro.).

Maurice Harold Grant, Catalogue of Flower and Fruit Paintings of Jan van Huysum, 1682-1749 (Leigh-on-Sea, Great Britain: F. Lewis Publishers, 1954), no. 29, p. 19.

Loan Exhibition: Magic of Flowers in Painting (New York: Wildenstein, 1954), unpaginated, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 100, (repro.).

Henry Clifford and Carl Zigrosser, “A World of Flowers: Paintings and Prints,” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 58, no. 277 (Spring 1963): 132, (repro.).

William H. Gerdts, “On the Tabletop: Europe and America,” Art in America 60, no. 5 (September/October 1972): 64, (repro.).

Michael Jaffé, "The Flemish and Dutch Schools,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 512-513, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 44-45, (repro.)].

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 120, (repro.).

Harry A. Broad, “The Floral Motif in Still Life,” Arts and Activities (September 1979): 38, 73, (repro.).

Peter Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Grand Rapids, MI, 1986), 126, (repro.).

Alice Thorson, “Uncover the Painting, Discover the Past: Restoring Artwork Can Be a Touchy Job for This Conservator,” Kansas City Star (June 9, 1998): E1, as Vase of Flowers.

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