Women Painters of Flowers

Judith Leyster.  "Striped Tulip."  1643, from her book on tulips.

Leyster was one of the foremost painters in Amsterdam, most sought

after teacher, and successful businesswoman.   She was a close 

friend and business rival of Franz Hals. 

Rachel Ruysch (3 June 1664 – 12 August 1750) was a still life painter from the Northern Netherlands who specialized in flowers. She invented her own style and achieved international fame in her lifetime.  Due to her long and successful career that spanned over 6 decades, she became the best documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age.  Her father was a professor of anatomy and botany, and an amateur painter.  At a young age she began to paint the flowers and insects of her father's collection.

She studied with several still life painters.   Willem van Aelst taught her painting techniques, as well as how to arrange a bouquet in a vase so it would look spontaneous and less formalized. This technique produced a more realistic and three-dimensional affect in her paintings. By the time Ruysch was eighteen she was producing and selling independently signed works.

In 1693 she married the Amsterdam portrait painter Juriaen Pool, with whom she had ten children. Throughout her marriage and adult life she continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons.

Sarah Miriam Peale (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 19, 1800 – February 4, 1885, Philadelphia) was an American portrait painter, one of the notable family of artists descended from the miniaturist and still-life painter James Peale, who was her father and Mary Claypoole, who was her mother. Miriam Peale is noted as a portrait painter, mainly of politicians and military figures. Lafayette sat for her four times.

Sarah was James Peale's youngest daughter and was trained by her father, and uncle Charles Willson Peale. She served as a studio assistant to her father. Her first public works date from 1816 with subjects such as flowers and still-life but soon turned to portraiture, In 1818, she spent three months with Rembrandt Peale, her cousin, in Baltimore, and again in 1820 and 1822. He influenced her painting style and subject matter. For 25 years, she painted in Baltimore (1822–47) and, intermittently, in Washington, D.C. She attended sessions of Congress, and painted portraits 
of many  public figures.

Currier and Ives lithograph, "Abundance of Life," created by Fanny Palmer in 1862.  Cost $2.00

In the 19th century, prints by Currier and Ives were moderately priced artworks which

any family could afford and became extremely popular.  A number of artists worked with

Currier and Ives andcreated the works.  One of the most successful artists who worked 
with C&I was Frances "Fanny" Palmer.

Frances Flora Bond Palmer was an English artist who became successful in the United States as a lithographer for Currier and Ives.

She was born in Leicester, England on July 24, 1812, into a well-off family and was instructed in music, literature, and the fine arts. But financial problems led to Fanny and her husband working.
By the year 1841, the Palmers operated a lithography business together with Fanny as the artist and Edmund as the printer. But they were unable to support themselves, and in 1843 moved to New York to try a new life.  Fanny taught singing, painting, drawing and wax flower making and worked as a governess and chaperone. Also, she and her husband set themselves up in a printing business again. 

When the Palmers were once again unable to secure enough work for themselves, their business failed for a second time. Nathaniel Currier then took over their stock and, recognizing Palmer's talents, hired her to work for his firm.  During Palmer's association with the printing companies of N. Currier and Currier and Ives, between 1849-1868, she is credited with producing around two hundred lithographs. She participated in every stage of the lithographic printing process in some way and was widely renowned for her technical skills. She is also credited with assisting Nathaniel Currier in the improvement of existing lithographic technology, including Currier's own lithographic crayon.

Lilly Martin Spencer.  "Roses."  1856


Lilly Martin Spencer (November 26, 1822 – May 22, 1902) was one of the most popular and widely reproduced American female genre painters in the mid-nineteenth century. She painted domestic scenes, women and children and still lifes in a warm happy atmosphere.   Born in England, she emigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was eight and settled in Ohio.  She was home schooled and mostly self taught, but when she moved to New York and got married, she was exposed to the formal art world.  She became the major breadwinner in the family, producing paintings of domestic bliss for a burgeoning market.  She and her husband had 13 children.  She worked in her studio, and he took care of the household and children.

Georgia  O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) was an American artist who is best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the "Mother of American modernism".

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in a farmhouse located in the town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents were dairy farmers.  O'Keeffe was the second of seven children and the first daughter. By age ten she had decided to become an artist, and she and her sister received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann.  She then  studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906. In 1907, she attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she studied under William Merritt Chase. 

Georgia O'Keeffe.  "Petunia."  1925

 But she became disillusioned with painting and became a school teacher for several years.  Then she was inspired to paint again in 1912, when she attended a class at the University of Virginia Summer School, where she was introduced to the innovative ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow by Alon Bement. Dow encouraged artists to express themselves using line, color, and shading harmoniously.   By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe began making large-scale paintings of natural forms at close range, as if seen through a magnifying lens. In 1924, she painted her first large-scale flower painting "Petunia, No. 2," which was first exhibited in 1925. 

Georgia O'Keeffe.  "Oriental Poppies."  1929

Recording each detail of a flower and petal was not important, but capturing the
broad swaths of color and form and line were all-important.

Georgia O'Keeffe.  "Black Iris."  1926

This monumental flower painting is one of O'Keeffe's early masterpieces. Enlarging the petals far beyond lifesize proportions, she forces the viewer to observe the small details that might otherwise be overlooked. When paintings from this group were first shown in 1924, even Alfred Stieglitz, her husband and dealer, was shocked by their audacity.

O'Keeffe' famous irises were an important preoccupation for many years; she favored the black iris, which she could only find at certain New York florists for about two weeks each spring. The enlargements and abstractions derived from the flower have often been explained in gynecological terms, almost clinical in their precision.  Some Feminist art critics saw the image as a sexual metaphor, but O'Keeffe rejected the notion of her flowers as sexual metaphors - this is something she feels is created by the viewer who applies his own associations to the works, not hers. O'Keefe maintains:

"Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't."

One of the greatest and most important photographers in the first half
of the 20th century. was Imogen Cunningham.  "Two Calla lilies."

Imogen Cunningham (1883 –1976) was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to the sharp-focus rendition of simple subjects.  She was born in Portland,the fifth of 10 children and grew up in Seattle, Washington.


In 1901, at the age of eighteen, Cunningham bought her first camera, a 4x5 inch view camera, via mail order from the American School of Art in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  It wasn't until 1906, while studying at the University of Washington in Seattle, that she was inspired to take up photography again by an encounter with the work of Gertrude Käsebier. With the help of her chemistry professor, Horace Byers, she began to study the chemistry behind photography and she subsidized her tuition by photographing plants for the botany department.  In 1907, Cunningham graduated from University of Washington with a degree in chemistry. Her thesis was titled “Modern Processes of Photography.”

"Tulip" by Imogen Cunningham

In the second half of the 20th century, African-American artist Alma Thomas
used the new language of abstraction and color field painting to depict flowers. 

"Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocus"  1969

This large, 5x6 foot painting, hangs in the National Museum of Women in the Arts

in Washington, D.C.  When you enter the room and first see it, it feels  like walking 

through a garden in spring.

Alma Thomas was born in 1891, the eldest of four children to John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer, in Columbus, Georgia. In 1906 the family moved to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. As a child Alma showed artistic interest, making puppets and sculptures at home. She attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes.

"Air View of a Spring Nursery"

Thomas entered Howard University in 1921 as a home economics student, only to switch to fine art after studying under art department founder James V. Herring. She earned her BS in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard, becoming the first graduate from the university fine art program. That year Thomas began teaching at Shaw Junior High School, where she taught until her retirement in 1960. In 1934 she earned her Masters in Art Education from Columbia University and studied painting at American University under Jacob Kainen from 1950 to 1960.  She retired in 1960 from teaching and dedicated herself to painting. 

"Breeze Rustling through the Flowers"


Within a few years after her first class at American U, she began creating Color Field paintings, inspired by the work of the New York School and Abstract Expressionism. She worked out of the kitchen in her house in Washington.

"Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto"

Her first retrospective exhibit was in 1966 at the Gallery of Art at Howard University. For this exhibition she created "Earth Paintings," a series of nature inspired abstract works, including "Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto" (1973).  Her paintings have been compared to Byzantine mosaics and the pointillist paintings of Georges-Pierre Seurat.

"Arboretum Dogwood"   1973

Alma Thomas created a highly personal style that expanded upon traditional Abstract Expressionist and Washington Color School practices through experimentations with abstraction, color, line and pattern.  She focused on her artistic career after retiring as a school teacher at the age of 69, and chartered her own course as an African-American woman within Washington D.C.’s largely white and male mid-20th century artistic community.

"Delightful Song of Red Dahlias"

 She often cited natural elements as inspiration, and her signature style reflects the influences of Henri Matisse, Josef Albers, and Wassily Kandinsky—featuring loosely painted yet meticulously constructed canvases, filled with lattice works of bright color creating patterns from negative space.

"White Daisies Rhapsody"  1973

Do the trees near your house play music? Do the flowers in your neighborhood sing and dance?
When Alma Thomas looked at her garden, she imagined that sometimes they did.  When the wind blew through the trees in her yard, she heard the leaves hum. When the sun was bright, she watched the flowers turn to face the sky.


Although she lived in the same small house in Washington, D.C., for almost her entire life, she watched her garden change every day. Some of the changes were small ones—the grass looked greener after a spring rain, and the leaves began to change color after the first fall frost. But some of the changes were much bigger—a fall storm knocked branches and blossoms to the ground, and once the moon moved in front of the sun in an eclipse, making the shadows sharper and colors deeper than usual.

"Aquatic Garden"

Alma Thomas enjoyed all of these changes. They made her garden more interesting to her. And they made her think about ways she could change her paintings, to make them just as interesting as her garden.


She wanted to try a new kind of painting—unlike anything she'd ever seen or done before. But how? As she thought about this, she stood at her window, watching the holly tree in her front yard. She decided to try painting everything she saw—the sun shining through the leaves, the breeze rustling them, the shadows changing their shape and color. This would be her new kind of painting!

"Wind Dancing with Spring Flowers"

"I got some watercolors and some crayons, and I began dabbling," she said. "Little dabs of color that spread out very free…that's how it all began. And every morning since then, the wind has given me new colors through the windowpanes."

Alma Thomas put these new colors and patterns into her paintings to show us the kinds of changes she enjoyed watching. Then, when she was finished, she gave her paintings special names, to tell us what they reminded her of and why they made her happy.

The titles Alma Thomas chose for her paintings tell us that the wind brought her much more than new colors to paint. It made her crepe myrtle tree seem to play music and the flowers on her azalea bush sing and dance to rock 'n' roll!

If you would like to seee more of Alma Thomas' flower inspired paintings, click on
http://mvg222.blogspot.com/2016/09/alma-thomas-flowers.html

Mattie Lou O'Kelley.  "Blue Morning Glories."   1977

Mattie Lou was a self-taught folk artist from Georgia, who is now recognized
as one of the finest folk artists of the 20th century, with works in all major art
museums.  Like most folk artists, there is a compression of space and a
fascination with detail and repetitive pattern.

Mattie Lou O'Kelley.  "Yellow Vase with Pink Morning Glories."  1975

Mattie Lou loved morning glories and painted them in every color.

And when I was in Montreal a few weeks ago, I came upon a contemporary
Canadian artist who is inspired by flowers to create large, gorgeous paintings
of color, form, and line, as Georgia O'Keeffe did..
Her name is Vicki McFarland, and she lives in Ontario, Canada.

The title of the show in Montreal is  
"The Awaking of Summer Blooms."

The paintings are large, this is 5 x 5 feet.  They have a presence
and they envelope you in their space.  The colors are
especially rich.

She begins by priming the canvas, covering it with a smooth
coating of white paint,  She then places the canvas, stretched on
its frame, in a position against a table where she can move it.

She works with acrylic paints, which she dilutes with water, and then pours them on the
surface and guides the flow of the pigment with an ivory spatula as she lifts and turns
the canvas.  The result is both spontaneous and controlled.

In the gallery, each of these large canvases grabs and holds your attention; your eye does
not wander elsewhere.  You don't look for details, but respond to the overall image.

McFarland is fond of the amethyst color and uses it frequently.

"Iris"

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