Anon. Greater Spearwort Flower & Grass

British Wildflowers on Linen Gauze

This striking painting forms part of an unusual collection of works that we have for sale depicting a whole range of British wildflowers on linen gauze cloth; flower types include dog-, marsh-, and sweet white violet; crab apple and hawthorn blossoms; dog- and burnet roses; sea bindweed, pennywort and gorse; poppy, buttercup, daffodil, honeysuckle, snowdrop, forget-me-not and deadly nightshade.

The works have a strong decorative quality—bordered by dark grey paper, and often cut to roundel or layered over further paintings on a backing sheet. Painting on silk cloth originated in Asia—predating painting on paper and spreading from China to Japan—and these works share some of the aesthetic qualities of these traditional styles. Silk paintings would often focus on simple subjects, such as a branch with fruit or a few flowers, in a limited colour palette and without any background detail. In Japan such images also featured as woodblock prints—the dark borders encircling these flowers echoing the heavy black outlines often used to define the boundaries between shapes in woodblock prints.

The choice of wildflowers, however, brings a distinctly British element to the paintings. These works were produced at a time when flower-rich grasslands and meadows were a common sight. Observing wildflowers was a feature of everyday rural life, and popular knowledge and appreciation of the simple things growing around us was much greater. It is estimated that over 97% of Britain's wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s.