Description
An original mid-19th-century watercolour painting, Circle of James Holland, Red Dahlia Flower. An exquisite painting of a red dahlia flower. in the Victorian language of flowers, dahlias were given as symbols of devotion, love, beauty & dignity. Hand-painted in watercolour with gum arabic to intensify the colour. On thin card. With gum arabic to intensify the colour. On thin card. This watercolour is one of a small group of outstanding flower paintings that we have for sale, which derive from an 1830s album. The album contained pictures of consistently high quality & included additional floral works by James Holland OWS (1799-1870) & Thomas Holland (c.1795-1865). The Holland brothers were born in Burslem, Staffordshire, where their father was employed at the pottery works of William Davenport in Longport. Following this path, they also worked at the pottery works from a young age, painting flowers on pottery & porcelain, & the brothers became known for their exquisite botanical subjects. James Holland, the more successful of the two, moved to London in 1819, where he continued to work as a pottery painter, but also gave lessons in drawing landscapes, architecture, & marine subjects. He became an associate exhibitor of The Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1835, joined the Society of British Artists in 1843, & in 1858 was elected a full member of the Old Water Colour Society. The anonymous paintings in the present collection reflect the Victorian love affair with natural history, which cut across gender & class barriers & manifested in passionate crazes in everything from shells & seaweed to ferns & fruit. The burgeoning sciences of botany & medicine, fostered by expeditions around the world, called for the skills of the botanical illustrator, & the combination of art & botany produced some of the most beautiful books & periodicals ever published. The paintings in this collection bring to this science a sense of the decorativethe translation of the pictorial qualities of flowers onto the page. The collection therefore also represents the way in which the floral was increasingly embraced in the middle-class Victorian home, in decorative ceramics & soft furnishings. The paint has retained its wonderful vibrancy despite its age. The odd small patch of age toning as shown. Please see photos for detail. There are historic adhesive marks and/or paper remnants to the verso, from previous mounting. Circle Of James Holland, Red Dahlia Flower - 19Th-Century Watercolour Painting
