Style of Cornelis Johannes 'Johan' van Hulstijn Flower Still Life

Exquisite 1830s Botanical Watercolours

This watercolour is one of a small group of outstanding flower paintings that we have for sale, which derive from an 1830s album. The album contained pictures of consistently high quality and included additional floral works by James Holland OWS (1799–1870) and Thomas Holland (c.1795-1865).

The collection reflects the Victorian love affair with natural history, which cut across gender and class barriers and manifested in passionate crazes in everything from shells and seaweed to ferns and fruit. The burgeoning sciences of botany and medicine, fostered by expeditions around the world, called for the skills of the botanical illustrator, and the combination of art and botany produced some of the most beautiful books and periodicals ever published.

The paintings in this collection bring to this science a sense of the decorative—the translation of the pictorial qualities of flowers onto the page, with attention to vibrancy of colour and balance of composition. The collection therefore also represents the way in which the floral was increasingly embraced in the middle-class Victorian home, in decorative ceramics and soft furnishings, no longer only the preserve of the aristocratic elite.