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There\u2019s a story about an ancient Greek painter named Zeuxis who, in a painting contest with a rival, painted grapes that looked so realistic the birds flew down and tried to eat them.<\/p>\n
As I looked at these grapes by Margareta Haverman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week, I could imagine birds breaking through the ceiling, and swooping right in.<\/p>\n
A technical analysis of the painting revealed Haverman used up to seven layers of paint on the grapes, some added while the previous layer was still wet, to achieve the effect \u2014 evidence of an artist looking for the perfect form.<\/p>\n
Everywhere your eyes look, they encounter a torrent of detail. The intricate layers of the flower petals,<\/p>\n
the blushing of the fruit,<\/p>\n
the patterns on the wings of the bugs,<\/p>\n
the shine of the water droplets and the veins on the leaves.<\/p>\n
The leaves are bluer now than they would have been in 1716 because the yellow pigment Haverman used faded over time. Even with this bluer cast, there is a wide range of color: shocking reds, paler blues, bright whites, deep purples. <\/p>\n
You can picture Haverman in her studio with this set up in front of her, looking, sketching and painting, racing against the clock before her beautiful bouquet wilts and dies. (Remember, it\u2019s 1716: She can\u2019t take a photograph.)<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bouquet could never exist in reality,\u201d said Adam Eaker, assistant curator in the Department of European Paintings at the Met. \u201cThese flowers don\u2019t bloom at the same time of year, so Haverman would have slowly pieced this work together on the basis of individual studies.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, there are 30 different types of fruit and flowers, two species of butterfly, five other types of insects and a couple of garden snails:<\/p>\n
Flowers and fruit: 1) opium poppy foliage 2) cabbage rose 3) alyssum 4) pot marigold 5) forget-me-not 6) dwarf morning glory 7) white rose 8) lilac auricula 9) red catchfly 10) light blue hyacinth 11) hollyhock 12) passion flower 13) saxifrage 14) meadow grass 15) Maltese cross 16) New York aster 17) Persian tulip hybrid 18) pepperwort 19) tulip \u201cbaguette\u201d 20) English iris 21) white hyacinth 22) brown violet auricula 23) feverfew 24) sweet sultan 25) African marigold 26) jasmine 27) apple 28) violet auricula 29) white grapes 30) black grapes. Butterflies: a) heath fritillary b) red admiral. Other insects: c) lesser house fly d) yellow meadow ant e) bluebottle fly f) black ant g) garden bumblebee Snails: h) garden snail<\/p>\n
This is one of two surviving works of Haverman\u2019s. Little is known about her life, but we do know that she learned these techniques from a highly regarded flower painter, Jan van Huysum. This is a van Huysum from 1715:<\/p>\n
Can you see the similarities between Haverman (left) and van Huysum (right)?<\/p>\n
Particularly in the tulips:<\/p>\n
Haverman learned fast. She was good. Van Huysum was jealous. A 1751 biography of the eccentric and secretive van Huysum (who came from a family of painters and wouldn\u2019t even let his brothers see the inside of his studio) notes that Haverman\u2019s \u201cprowess aroused Jan\u2019s envy to such a degree that he longed to be rid of her.\u201d Female painters were rare and often needed a family connection to get into the field. (Haverman\u2019s father helped persuade van Huysum to take her on.) Many were relegated to still life painting because they weren\u2019t allowed to study the nude models.<\/p>\n
Still, Haverman excelled. That same biography notes she learned \u201cnot only to copy [Van Huysum\u2019s] paintings but also to paint beautifully from life; even to the amazement of connoisseurs, who came to see her work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually, van Huysum found a reason to drop her as his student. (It was described at the time as a \u201cmisdeed.\u201d) <\/p>\n
Her self-assurance is clear in the decisions she makes \u2014 see how the dark background causes that streak of white flowers to push even more to the fore, providing a central anchor for your eye.<\/p>\n
Zoom in (you may need to get up close) and you can just make out her signature at the bottom, appearing almost etched into the plinth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the confidence of her signature and the strange sculptural ornamentation of the vase, lurking in the shadows,\u201d Mr. Eaker said. \u201cI think the signature gives a wonderful sense both of Haverman\u2019s confidence as an artist and her skill at crafting an illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flower painting like this was common in the Netherlands. Even a hundred years earlier, artists like Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder were setting similarly striped tulips in arrangements in front of landscape backgrounds:<\/p>\n
Around this time, in the early 1600s, so-called \u201ctulip mania\u201d hit the Netherlands. The tulip was the new flower on the scene \u2014 introduced to the Netherlands via the Ottoman Empire \u2014 and were highly desired by the wealthy Dutch (among the wealthiest in the world), according to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum<\/a>. In the craze, the price of tulip bulbs were bid up and up (selling in one case for more than a Rembrandt painting<\/a>), creating what some describe as the first financial bubble. Eventually the bubble burst and tulip prices came crashing down, leaving some tulip speculators bankrupt<\/a>.<\/p>\n