A Feast of Flowers — Teylers Museum

A Feast of Flowers

Print Room presentation - Botanical art, from the 17th century to the present day

Jan 19, 2019 to Apr 28, 2019

Flowers have always been popular subjects in art. Lavish bouquets, stylised floral motifs, meticulous representations – the range of possibilities is immense. Teylers’s collection of drawings includes examples of every kind, from the sumptuous bouquets of Jan van Huysum and G.J.J. van Os to the blooms of Maria Sybilla Merian and Henriëtte Knip, which are as elegant as they are botanically accurate. A selection is shown in our Print Room.

Most of the artists shown here are women. For centuries, floral themes were among the few subjects deemed suitable for women. One of the artists highlighted in this exhibition is the 19th-century Elisabeth Koning. In her sublime botanical watercolours, of which Teylers possesses a large collection, she depicted exotic species from Indonesia, which she visited with her husband, a ship’s captain.

Georgius Jacobus Johannes van Os (1782-1861)
Flower stilllife