“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:
“Spring Breeze” (1946, oil on canvas) by Otto Torsten Andersson
“Poppy Field” by Michael Creese (nd)
“Bloomy Apple Garden” (1936) by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
“Sunflowers” (1958-59, oil on board) by Peter Coker
“Hyacinth” (1941, oil on board) by Chen Baoyi
“Les Dahlias” (1921, oil on canvas) by Tsuguhara Foujita
“The Poppy FIelds” (c1963) by Anne Redpath
“Marsh Marigolds” (1906) by Wladyslaw Slewinski
“Wannsee Garden” (1923, oil on canvas) by Max Liebermann
“Yellow Irises” (1901, oil on canvas) by Pablo Picasso
“The Orchard” (nd, oil on canvas) by Robert William Vonnoh
“Still Life with Pansies and Gladiolas” (nd, oil on canvas) by Arthur B. Carles
“Flowers by the Sea” (1965, oil on composition board) by Fairfield Porter
“Glass with Wild Flowers” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Petunias” (1925, oil on hardboard panel) by Georgia O’Keeffe
“Meadow” (1913, oil on canvas) by Mikko Oinonen
“Poppies and Violet Asters” (nd, watercolor) by Emil Nolde
“Pink Roses” (1890, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Black Will-o-the-Wisp” (date unknown, ink and wash) by Takato Yamamoto
“Paris Bouquet of Wild Flowers” (1923) by Pierre Bonnard
“Flower Garden, Pansies” (1908, oil on canvas) by Emil Nolde
“Pink and Yellow Tree” (nd, oil on canvas) by Albert Henry Krehbiel
“Les Roses” (1925-26, oil on canvas) by Claude Monet
“L’amandier en fleurs” (1947) by Pierre Bonnard
“Magnolien” (1945, oil on canvas) by Cuno Amiet
“Poppies and Grasses” (1914, oil on canvas) by Pierre Bonnard
“Orchard with Blossoming Trees” (1888, oil on canvas) by Vincent van Gogh
“Flowers on a Chair” (1958, oil on canvas) by Adrian Ryan
“Apple Tree Blooming” aka “The Eternal Spring” (1908) by Maurice Denis
“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
