Helen Jaques Ware, Massachusetts, circa 1930
Thence by descent through the family

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in lovely condition. The canvas has been lined and the paint layer has been cleaned and varnished. There is a small retouch in the upper left background, but for the most part, as far as we can see, there are no other restorations of any note visible either to the naked eye or under ultraviolet light. There's little or no abrasion to the complicated and delicate technique in the floral arrangement and clearly this picture is in lovely condition.
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Many of the flowers in this abundant arrangement were trad🎉itional favorites in Old Master flower pieces from the seventeenth century onwards - including the fritillaria imperialis, anemone, iris, tulip, peony and the white and pink roses.  In eighteenth century flower paintings these were joined by poppies, auriculas and the two types of yellow roses seen here.  Many of these flowers, including the yellow roses, were first introduced into Europe from the East and were still regarded as exotic.  Painstaking collection and breeding had resulted in tulips with fine markings on the petals, while roses, peonies and poppies had been developed to produce large double flowers.  During the eighteenth century more flowers from America were also coming into European cultivation - many artists chose morning glory and nasturtiums to add vivid touches of blue and orange to their paintings. If Bloemers' yellow dais👍y is coreopsis, this was a recent introduction from the New World, as were the godetias, but most spectacular of the American flowers was the dahlia, first mentioned soon after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, but only just arriving in European gardens as Bloemers was painting.

At🌃 this time rhododendrons were also starting to excite collectors, originally because of the boxes of living American plants sent by John Bartram from Pennsylvania to his plant-collecting friends in London, especially Peter Collinson.  However these early American rhododendrons proved hard to cultivate and the plant shown here is R. ponticum from the Near East which adapted far more readily ꦉto the shrubberies which were then becoming fashionable in European gardens.  It was also customary in flower paintings to include some traditional European flowers even if they tended to appear rather small or peripheral - like the honeysuckle, cornflower, pansy, columbine, bistort and meadowsweet.  The sweet peas, although also rather submerged in this arrangement, were more special, having been discovered growing wild in Sicily and brought into general cultivation in the eighteenth century.