Tulips

Sina Mesdag-van Houten was a Dutch painter and the wife of the marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag — her own practice extending from portraits to flower subjects and still lifes. Her 'Tulips' (1887) belongs to the tradition of Dutch flower painting that stretches from the seventeenth century to the present — the tulip as a specifically Dutch flower (despite its Turkish origin, it became the symbol of Dutch floral culture through the tulip mania of the 1630s and the subsequent Dutch bulb industry). Her treatment would bring a fresh nineteenth-century eye to this most Dutch of floral subjects.

Sina Mesdag-van Houten renders the tulips with the observational precision and painterly quality that distinguished her flower work — the tulips' specific forms (the smooth, simple petals, the variety of colors within the bulb) depicted with both botanical accuracy and aesthetic sensitivity. Her handling of the light on the flowers' surfaces and the compositional arrangement of the blooms reflects her training and sustained practice as a still-life painter.