Chrysanthèmes

Antoine Vollon's 'Chrysanthèmes' (1886) is a flower still life from the painter who was among the most celebrated French still-life specialists of the late nineteenth century — his engagement with flowers extended his primary still-life practice from kitchen and pantry subjects to the more refined world of the decorative flower arrangement. The chrysanthemum, introduced to France from East Asia in the eighteenth century, had become one of the most popular of late autumn flowers by the nineteenth century, and Vollon's treatment engaged with the flower's distinctive form (dense, multiple-petaled, spherical) and its specific color range.

Vollon renders the chrysanthemums with his characteristic thick, lustrous paint quality — the dense flowers' complex forms built through layered impasto that creates the three-dimensional reality of the petals rather than a flat depiction of them. His handling of the chrysanthemum's specific visual character — the multiple layers of petals radiating from the center, the variety of colors within a single flower head — demonstrates his close observational engagement with the specific flower's formal qualities.