“Flowering Garden in Spring” (1920, oil on canvas) by Henri Martin
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” ~ Iris Murdoch
The Bradford pears and Tulip trees are in full bloom, and I am reminded of the year I made mother’s day cards from photos I had taken of the trees in bloom—I was very pleased with how they had turned out, but my mother looked at hers and said, “What’s this?” Lex later told me that Mom had complained that I was too cheap to buy a card; Lex tried to explain to her that I had shot the photograph, worked with it on Photoshop, and had the print made. I had thought the gesture special. Oh well.
Anyway, I have to admit that when I was clearing out the thousands of cards in my mother’s drawers, I came across almost every card I had given her in the past decade and sometimes beyond, and the flimsy free homemade card I had made her was there.
Here. Have some flowers of spring:
“Meadow” (1913, oil on canvas) by Mikko Oinonen
“L’amandier en fleurs” (1947) by Pierre Bonnard
“Les Dahlias” (1921, oil on canvas) by Tsuguhara Foujita
“Poppy Field” by Michael Creese (nd)
“Hyacinth” (1941, oil on board) by Chen Baoyi
“Flower Garden, Pansies” (1908, oil on canvas) by Emil Nolde
“Orchard with Blossoming Trees” (1888, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Apple Tree Blooming” aka “The Eternal Spring” (1908) by Maurice Denis
“Sunflowers” (1958-59, oil on board) by Peter Coker
“Flowers by the Sea” (1965, oil on composition board) by Fairfield Porter
“Poppies and Grasses” (1914, oil on canvas) by Pierre Bonnard
“Poppies and Violet Asters” (nd, watercolor) by Emil Nolde
“Les Roses” (1925-26, oil on canvas) by Claude Monet
“Pink Roses” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Flowers on a Chair” (1958, oil on canvas) by Adrian Ryan
“Magnolien” (1945, oil on canvas) by Cuno Amiet
“The Poppy FIelds” (c1963) by Anne Redpath
“Glass with Wild Flowers” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Wannsee Garden” (1923, oil on canvas) by Max Liebermann
“Bloomy Apple Garden” (1936) by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
“Petunias” (1925, oil on hardboard panel) by Georgia O’Keeffe
“Paris Bouquet of Wild Flowers” (1923) by Pierre Bonnard
“Still Life with Pansies and Gladiolas” (nd, oil on canvas) by Arthur B. Carles
“Pink and Yellow Tree” (nd, oil on canvas) by Albert Henry Krehbiel
“The Orchard” (nd, oil on canvas) by Robert William Vonnoh
“Spring Breeze” (1946, oil on canvas) by Otto Torsten Andersson
“Yellow Irises” (1901, oil on canvas) by Pablo Picasso
“Marsh Marigolds” (1906) by Wladyslaw Slewinski
“Black Will-o-the-Wisp” (date unknown, ink and wash) by Takato Yamamoto
“Two Austrian Copper Roses III” (1957, oil on canvas laid down on board) by Georgia O’Keeffe
Music by Mussorgsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition” (Promenade), performed by The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
