Poppy

Throughout his career, Philipp Otto Runge used scissors to cut remarkable freehand silhouettes of plants. Here he renders the curving slender stem of a poppy, its spiky leaves, and the individual scallops of each petal with astounding precision. In the unlikely medium of flat-white paper he captures the living specimen's vitality and individuality. While Runge's early black silhouettes conform to the Romantic tradition of commemorating a sitter's face by recording the shadow of his or her unique profile, his plant cutouts were made with white paper, which is more consistent with traditional depictions of animate vegetation.