Circle of James Holland Purple Iris Flower

Circle of James Holland OWS (1799–1870): Exquisite 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 Holland brothers were born in Burslem, Staffordshire, where their father was employed at the pottery works of William Davenport in Longport. Following this path, they also worked at the pottery works from a young age, painting flowers on pottery and porcelain, and the brothers became known for their exquisite botanical subjects.

James Holland, the more successful of the two, moved to London in 1819, where he continued to work as a pottery painter, but also gave lessons in drawing landscapes, architecture, and marine subjects. He became an associate exhibitor of The Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1835, joined the Society of British Artists in 1843, and in 1858 was elected a full member of the Old Water Colour Society.

The anonymous paintings in the present collection reflect 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. 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.