Flower Still Life

This 1614 flower still life in the J. Paul Getty Museum is an early work by Ambrosius Bosschaert, painted during the period when he was establishing his reputation in Middelburg. By 1614, Bosschaert had been painting flower pieces for perhaps a decade and had arrived at the format that would define his career: the symmetrical bouquet, the stone ledge, the window or niche setting, and the mix of rare and common flowers arranged with an idealist's disregard for botanical impossibility. The Getty, which holds the work as part of its significant Dutch and Flemish holdings, acquired it as an example of the genre's formative period. The flower market of early seventeenth-century Middelburg, fed by the trade networks of the Dutch East India Company and the proximity to Dutch horticultural centres, provided Bosschaert with access to exotic specimens — fritillaries, anemones, tulips from Turkey, plants from the Cape — that would have been extraordinary to his contemporaries.

Early Bosschaert on panel is slightly tighter and more tentative than his later work, though the fundamental technique is already in place. Individual flower forms are more carefully delimited in early works, with cleaner edges between overlapping petals. The glass or ceramic vase in early compositions is handled with the same care as in later works, but the spatial integration of the bouquet into its architectural setting — niche or window — is more schematic, less atmospheric.