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Fruit and Flowers

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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Paulus Theodorus van Brussel’s arrangement of fruit and flowers reveals the eighteenth-century taste for paintings depicting the exotic and expensive set in artful disarray against the faint background of a garden. It’s a celebration of the bounty of nature and is, at the same time, an appealing way of showing prize specimens. It also demonstrates his skill in painting texture. He has included poppies, hollyhocks and celosia, but the flowers – not as rare and pricey as they had been a century before the picture was painted – seem to take second place to the abundant fruits. These are mostly hothouse grown, and therefore costly: melons, black and translucent green grapes, peaches and a pineapple with its spiky crown at the top of the arrangement, almost seeming to float in space.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

Fruit and Flowers

Date

1789

Medium

Oil on mahogany

Measurements

H 78.4 x W 61 cm

Accession number

NG5800

Acquisition method

Presented by Frederick John Nettlefold, 1947

Work type

Painting

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The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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