Still life of raspberries in a willow pattern bowl, with cherries and bindweed
Eloise Harriet Stannard (1829-1915)
1881
Oil on canvas
33 x 27.8 cm
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Particularly attractive here is the willow-pattern bowl. The artfully /carelessly distributed fruit mingled with the bright white bindweed (whiter than the bowl, and adding the trumpet-effect of the flower to the plump roundness of the fruit) contributes to another clever composition. The wasps are having a feast!
Flower and fruit painting were a genre, or perhaps sub-genre, of Victorian art, felt to be especially appropriate for women artists who were so often tied to the home by the demands of family. Besides, here was a subject that did not require training or skill in figure studies, since such training was generally out of reach for women during most of the century. Watercolour was a popular medium but it seems to have been the fashion for the composition to be rather more richly coloured than in nature, and here Eloise Stannard might have gained an advantage by using oils, although a reviewer in the Art Journal suggested that both mediums could reach the required "brilliancy" (notice the condescending remark at the beginning though):
Fruits and flowers are not supposed to awaken the nobler faculties of mind; and, therefore, the art of painting them has never ranked among the highest. Yet we may venture to plead in favour of the class that, within its restricted sphere, it can attain an absolute perfection, which is necessarily denied to more ambitious attempts. The two qualities we require to find pre-eminent in fruit and flower pieces, are brilliancy of colour, and the elaboration of illusive detail; and in both respects, many of our painters in oil and in water have reached an excellence which leaves little to be desired. Fruits and flowers, especially when crowned in the gold of autumn, are as rich in glory of colour as robes painted by Titian or Veronese. Again, for execution, the witchery of Art knows no more cunning wiles than here brought to play. Opaque lights, sharp and sparkling, are set in contrast to liquid shadows, transparent and lustrous as gems, reflecting each fugitive colour which sports in the sunbeam. The result should not stop short of actual illusion; the dewdrop must hang as a pearl, the bunch of grapes must stand out in solid relief, yet the eye should pierce to their translucent centre. Again we repeat, that the treatment which fruits and flowers have received at the hands of the chief among our painters, who have given themselves to this department, leaves little to be desiderated. [114]
It is just unfortunate that this discussion should have started in a rather negative way. Such work, however good, was certainly not seen as "high art."
Gerrish Nunn, Pamela. Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian Painting. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995 (see Ch. 2 on the issue of flower painting and women).
"Still life of raspberries in a willow pattern bowl, with cherries and bindweed 1890." Norfolk Museums Collections. Web. 10 April 2022.
"The Royal Academy." The Art-Journal. Vol. 25 (1863): 105-16. Hathi Trust. Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 10 April 2022.
Created 10 April 2022
