Floral Still Life

This exuberant bouquet has a very natural air. And yet the combination of tulips, anemones, roses and carnations is an artificial one. No doubt Bollongier worked from drawings, as did his fellow arists. We may assume that this bouquet is an allusion to mortality. In the 1630s striped tulips were enormously popular and a great many people who had traded in tulip bulbs were ruined in 1637, when the bottom fell out of the market.

Purchased in 1883, from the collection of P.C. Baron Nahuys- Hodgson.