From Nature in the Garden

Rubens Peale’s exuberant arrangement of cut flowers displays the botanical bounty he culled from his greenhouse and garden between January 7 and December 23, 1856. Observed from nature but infused with imagination and energy, this is one of his most accomplished works.
Peale made a career of managing his family’s museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York, but during the last decade of his life he merged his love of gardening with his innate, although largely untutored, gift for bold artistic expression. Many of his pictures were gifts for family and friends and he dedicated this work to his son, Charles Willson Peale, the namesake of his famous grandfather.