artists – Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society

January 2024 Talk: Flowers in Art

Stella introducing Ruth — Audience at January 2024 Talk

Ruth Cornett is a senior director of Heritage and Taxation at Christies and has previously given a talk to CABAHS about her garden at Eltham Palace Gatehouse. This talk focused on flowers in art. She said all gardeners in the way they visually create their gardens are artists, but not all artists are gardeners. Rather than describe the history of flower painting, she focused on how artists used flowers and plants to express themes – how through their paintings they send messages and use symbols and allegories. For example, paintings may comment on a name, be used for propaganda, as a tool for study, to make literary references, be used for educational purposes or to symbolise Christian stories. She illustrated these themes using famous artists from the Renaissance to the present day such as Rubens, Durer, Van Dyke, Murillo and in modern times Ravilious and Hockney.

For example, Ruth pointed out that Botticelli’s Primavera (1478-1502) is an allegory celebrating spring. The Laurel tree in the background of Georgione’s portrait of a new wife, Laura (1506) is a pun on her name and emphasis on her being a strong, loyal determined woman. The portrait of Edward V1 by Scrots (c.1540) is a good example of how paintings were used for propaganda purposes by the powerful. In this picture, the sun shines and looks down on Edward and the plants are growing towards him, whilst the Tudor rose in his hand shows that the Tudor Dynasty is moving forward. Ruth points to Durer’s The Great Piece of Turf (1503) a seemingly unordered collection of wild plants used to represent nature as an example of using paintings for study. Literary references can be seen in Millais’ Ophelia (1851), a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where she is depicted in a naturalistic setting lying dead in a river covered in flowers – a painting which took him several months to create its content and structure. Before photography, paintings and prints were used for educational purposes and Ruth cites the Hortus Elthamensis Seu Plantarum Rariorum by Dillenius (1732) which obtained its plant specimens from the area around Eltham. A Christian story can be seen in Van Dyck’s (1613) table set with bread and wine which were used to represent symbols of Christ and wealth.

A September visit

On a recent visit to Madrid, I called in to the house of Joaquim Sorolla (to my mind, one of the greatest of the Impressionist painters). Like Monet and others, he was one of those artists who loved his garden and, in later life, used it for inspiration and as subject matter. Located in the heart of Madrid, the garden has been created to manage the heat of the city. ‘The garden with its Moorish echoes is the quintessence of the Spanish garden’[1]. It is divided up into three linked but clearly distinguished parts. There is extensive use of aspidistras in huge pots to line balconies and provide focal points around the garden. Roses are grown in pots and situated throughout the garden – the ones I saw in flower were of a cream I associate with ‘Buff Beauty’. And, of course, plenty of pelargoniums in pots, most of which had finished flowering (my visit was in September). If in Madrid, do visit!

Luca de Tena, C. (2021) *Museo de Sorolla, Madrid*. Ediciones el Viseo.

Artists and gardens

Catherine Horwood’s mention of Cedric Morris in her talk is a reminder of the close relationship between artists and their gardens. In 2016 The Royal Academy held a wonderful exhibition ‘Painting the Modern Garden, Monet to Matisse’, which devoted one room to Monet’s triptych of waterlilies. Many of us have had the pleasure of visiting his garden at Giverny, which is the subject of some of his most famous works of art.

Claude Monet The Water Lily Pond (National Gallery)

Alfred Parsons (1847 – 1920) was an English artist who not only created his own garden, but designed for others. He provided the illustrations for many famous garden writers including Ellen Willmott (The Genus Rosa) and William Robinson (The Wild Garden). His friendship with Robinson led to him lending advice on the planting at Gravetye Manor.

Parsons had a wide mix of friends in both America and England, including John Singer Sargent and the novelist Henry James. Parsons’ paintings apparently mirrored the aspirations of Americans for an English garden and in 1899, when Henry James bought Lamb House in Rye, he invited Parsons to design the garden for him. It was here that he wrote some of his most acclaimed novels. Lamb House was much later bought by E.F. Benson and the view of the garden from the windows provided the inspiration for the Mapp and Lucia novels. In 2014, the BBC adapted these for a television series and used the garden at Lamb House for filming.

Anna Chancellor and Miranda Richardson in the garden at Lamb House

And so, to Cedric Morris. As well as painting portraits, still lifes and landscapes, Morris painted flowers extensively. In Higham Suffolk, he and his partner founded the East Anglia School of Art, but here Morris also indulged his passion for plants and, in particular, irises. He produced at least 90 named varieties and also exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show. His gravestone reads ‘Cedric Morris Artist and Plantsman’.

Cedric Morris Iris Seedlings, 1943, Tate Gallery

I am often struck by how much a beautifully designed herbaceous border, the Long Border at Great Dixter for example, resembles a work of art.

Vija

The English landscape

I recently attended a lecture (on Zoom of course!) about Thomas Gainsborough and his connection to the English landscape. Many people will be familiar with his portraits, but the landscapes in the background are not always commented on so widely, unless it is the painting of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, which seems to be the subject of a huge range of interpretations (not all repeatable in a horticultural blog perhaps).

Heart of Oak - Royal Navy Anthem — Heart of Oak – Royal Navy Anthem

The 18^th century was a period of great upheaval – the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 triggering a financial panic; in 1721 the country had its first prime minister in Sir Robert Walpole; in 1739 Britain declared war on Spain; in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland to claim the British throne; in 1756 the Seven Years war between Britain and France began; there was unrest both in America and at home and throughout this period, there was a Hanoverian king. It is all too easy to forget that two of the great names associated with landscape architecture, William Kent and Lancelot Brown, were working against this background, with Brown finding little favour with the ordinary person by uprooting and moving whole villages when they stood in the way of his designs.

It is also no coincidence that Brown, Kent and their peers were creating landscapes which came to be seen as quintessentially English. Reacting against the formality of the classic gardens which were inspired by those on the continent and France in particular, they designed gardens that were intended to reflect the ‘sinuous curves’ of the English countryside. Ironically, Brown, who never travelled outside the shores of his home island, was inspired by the paintings of French artists such as Poussin.

Nicolas Poussin Landscape with Figures c1646

In the background of Gainsborough’s paintings, this same concern with the natural is evident. Even in his most famous portraits, for example the one of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the actress Perdita. Both show an English landscape populated by English trees, most commonly the oak.

Mrs Mary Robinson (Perdita) by Thomas Gainsborough

Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough — Mrs Mary Robinson (Perdita) by Thomas Gainsborough

Apparently, as Gainsborough was not a ‘plein air’ artist, in order to remind himself of the shape of the oak he would arrange stems of sprouting broccoli in front of his easel!

This tension between what is an English garden and what is from mainland Europe has influenced garden design throughout history.

With the RHS encouraging people to plant a tree in their Roots for Remembrance, a nationwide memorial initiative, it seems an appropriate time to think about the role of the oak in English landscape culture.

Vija

Artistic licence

From time to time I suffer a degree of frustration when watching films which include shots of gardens or cultivation of some sort. I remember an adaptation of one of E. M. Forster’s novels which included a scene of a cottage with flowering wisteria climbing over the house and tulips and roses in the herbaceous borders. I’m not sure quite what kind of climactic freak would have forced all of these to be flowering at the same time.

In the Martian, Matt Damon cultivates potatoes in order to survive. But images of the potato plants showed thin spindly stems topped by a little green growth. I don’t know of a potato that grows in such a thin layer of soil and which produces growth like this and crops well! I’m not convinced that this is possible. OK perhaps I am being a little too literal here and should suspend disbelief for a while – after all it is only a film!

Martian-xlarge

When I visited Giverny some years ago in a wet May, I noticed that the wisteria on the bridge was blooming beautifully. When I took a closer look, I discovered that the blooms were silk! I queried this with one of the gardeners and he told me that a studio was filming in the garden and this was what they had specified. Film studios spend a great deal of time, money and effort into creating interiors, costumes and the like which are authentic. A whole industry has been built up around ensuring the integrity of films. But when it comes to gardens there seems to be a lapse which takes place. Of interest or knowledge I am not sure. I wonder if there is an opening for a garden consultant somewhere?

Vija

Chihuly glass sculptures at Kew Gardens

Thoroughly recommend visiting this exhibition if you can. We combined it with a visit to the Marianne North gallery and took all day over it. The sculptures are all based on plants and have been beautifully set around the gardens.