A Bouquet of Flowers

ca. 1612
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 617
Peeters was a founding figure in the history of European still life, a genre that attracted many women artists who did not have the opportunity to study nude models. In this ambitious composition, Peeters paid close attention to naturalistic details like dewdrops, insect bites, and drooping tulips that hint at transience and decay. At the same time, she asserted her own achievement by inscribing her signature in the stone ledge, juxtaposed with a fallen sprig of forget-me-nots. The crisp edges and acute observation that characterize her work reveal the close link between floral painting and botanical illustration during the Scientific Revolution.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: A Bouquet of Flowers
  • Artist: Clara Peeters (Flemish, Mechelen ca. 1587–after 1636 Ghent)
  • Date: ca. 1612
  • Medium: Oil on wood
  • Dimensions: 18 1/8 × 12 5/8 in. (46 × 32 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace, Howard S. and Nancy Marks, Friends of European Paintings, and Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill Gifts, Gift of Humanities Fund Inc., by exchange, Henry and Lucy Moses Fund Inc. Gift, and funds from various donors, 2020
  • Object Number: 2020.22
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

Audio

Cover Image for 5237. A Bouquet of Flowers

5237. A Bouquet of Flowers

Clara Peeters, 1612

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KATHY GALITZ: I like that she signed her work so that she couldn’t fall into oblivion. She’s already thinking about her reputation and being remembered as a woman artist.

Hi. I’m Kathy Galitz and I’m an art historian and educator at the museum.

NARRATOR: There’s her signature: Clara Peeters, right at the bottom by the stone ledge: below the three little blue flowers known as forget-me-nots.

KATHY GALITZ: She really helped develop this genre in the 17th Century, with the idea that often what artists were painting was, you know, more than meets the eye.

And you see that in this still life, because the flowers, as lush and beautiful as some of them are, if you look really closely, some of them are wilting, some of them have fallen and have dropped to the table. And it makes you realize this is beautiful, but it’s not going to be beautiful forever, just like we’re not going to live forever either.

NARRATOR: Despite its nuance and complexity, still-life painting was often placed at the bottom of artistic hierarchies at the time. Associate Curator Adam Eaker.

ADAM EAKER: Because it didn’t include any human figures, it didn’t require students to study live models or to read ancient texts. It was considered to be the least intellectual genre of painting…

NARRATOR: ...and, not unrelatedly...

KATHY GALITZ: It was often then a genre that was associated with women and deemed, you know, acceptable for a woman to paint.

ADAM EAKER: Women were, in most cases, excluded from studying the live model, which was a key component of an artistic education in this period. But it wasn’t considered proper for young women to be around naked men posing in an academy. And so instead, what they were able to become proficient at depicting, was more likely to be still life subjects.

This painting is a recent acquisition by The Met, purchased in 2020, and it very much reflects our ongoing project of expanding, or questioning the canon of European painting.

KATHY GALITZ: I think that’s something really, really important, to show other women artists who’ve been forgotten.

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