Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase
| Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase | |
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| Artist |
Balthasar van der Ast 
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| Year | c.1620s |
| Medium |
oil paint
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| Dimensions | 36.6 cm (14.4 in) × 27.7 cm (10.9 in) |
| Location | Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum |
| Owner | Adele Cockerill
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| Accession No. | GK 19
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| Identifiers | RKDimages: 70105 |
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Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase is a circa 1620s floral painting by Balthasar van der Ast in the collection of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum.
Balthasar van der Ast was a respected flower painter from Middelburg, active in Utrecht, and considered a member of the Bosschaert dynasty and one of the great flower painters of his time. Little is known about Van der Ast's workshop and whether or not he worked on commission. Even less is known of the early provenance of his paintings. Besides what can be learned from his surviving paintings, archival evidence indicates he was active in Utrecht at the same time as Roelant Savery.
The painting shows flowers of various seasons accompanied by various fauna in an arranged bouquet on a stone slab, often in an unusual vase, and in this case, a Chinese export porcelain vessel called a Wan-Li vase. This motief was not his invention and was already quite common among his colleagues, and would remain popular for over a century, with Jan van Huysum and Rachel Ruysch still enjoying high prices for their flower bouquets crawling with bugs and reptiles such as this one.
The flaming red and gold tulip at the top is a variety quite common in Dutch gardens today, but is actually suffering from the tulip breaking virus that gives it that "flaming" striped effect. This painting is symbolic of the popular appreciation of tulips that would reach amazing heights in the so-called Tulip Mania that was yet to come.
Besides the tulip, the work shows the following flower species: Rosa gallica, Anemone hepatica, Aquilegia, Tagetes, Cyclamen, lacerta agilis, Cynthia cardui, a fly, a dragonfly, and a grasshopper (on the vase).
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