Just a quick note about the painting: A Flag of truce, included in the exhibition "Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity", held at the Leighton House Museum in London.
The oil painting is dated 1900, and was donated by the Dutch-born painter to the Artists' War Fund for a charitable exhibition organised to support the widows and the soldiers of the Boer War.
In the painting, a woman raises a vase full of white flowers. She has a crown of brown hair, rosy cheeks and the shade of a smile soften her concentrated expression. Her blue eyes are focused on the flowers, whose stems are pressed into a simple, tall glass vase.
There are two bunches of flowers: the unmistakable trumpets of the lilies and smaller, bowl-shaped starry flowers that, because of the connection of the painting with South Africa, remind me of the chincherinchees, Ornithogalum thyrsoides.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, these flowers became a profitable trade: they were collected in the damp areas along the Cape west coast and sent to England, where they flowered during the winter months, from Christmas until Easter. Their successful introduction is a female story. When, in 1880, the family of the Governor of the Cape, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, returned to London, the formidable Miss Hildagona Duckitt began to sent these flowers to his daughters, who loved them so much and made them famous in the British capital.
In the background of the painting, red and golden brush strokes reveal details of the painter's studio, his fascination for Oriental and Classical antiquity, a different story to explore in the other paintings of the exhibition.
Painting:The oil painting is dated 1900, and was donated by the Dutch-born painter to the Artists' War Fund for a charitable exhibition organised to support the widows and the soldiers of the Boer War.
In the painting, a woman raises a vase full of white flowers. She has a crown of brown hair, rosy cheeks and the shade of a smile soften her concentrated expression. Her blue eyes are focused on the flowers, whose stems are pressed into a simple, tall glass vase.
There are two bunches of flowers: the unmistakable trumpets of the lilies and smaller, bowl-shaped starry flowers that, because of the connection of the painting with South Africa, remind me of the chincherinchees, Ornithogalum thyrsoides.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, these flowers became a profitable trade: they were collected in the damp areas along the Cape west coast and sent to England, where they flowered during the winter months, from Christmas until Easter. Their successful introduction is a female story. When, in 1880, the family of the Governor of the Cape, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, returned to London, the formidable Miss Hildagona Duckitt began to sent these flowers to his daughters, who loved them so much and made them famous in the British capital.
In the background of the painting, red and golden brush strokes reveal details of the painter's studio, his fascination for Oriental and Classical antiquity, a different story to explore in the other paintings of the exhibition.
Flag of truce, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) oil on canvas, 1900https://www.wikiart.org/en/
Links:
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity
Leighton House Museum
7 July - 29 October 2017
https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites
Further reading:
The Smallest Kingdom, Plants and Plant Collectors at the Cape of Good Hope
Mike and Liz Fraser, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2011
Quadrilles and Konfyt, The Life and Journal of Hildagonda Duckitt, Mary Theodora Kuttel, Cape Town, Maskew Miller Limited, 1954
