Pick of the bunch: seven great flower artworks
A brimful-of-life drawing of intense observation that is part scientific investigation and part background study for his lost painting of Leda and the Swan. In this small, but obsessively detailed drawing, all of Leonardo’s interests came together
William Morris, Strawberry Thief, 1883
Morris created 50 wallpaper designs that brought the English garden into the home. Thanks to him, dog roses, sunflowers, pomegranate flowers and larkspur still bloom in many interiors. ‘Remember that a pattern is either right or wrong,’ he said. His were always right
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888
The National Gallery’s version is one of several painted by the artist—a series both joyous and poignant. The gallery knows it is the most popular artwork in their collection because the varnish on the floor in front of it needs to be frequently repainted, thanks to the rub of countless feet
William Nicholson, Pink Roses in a Silver Lustre Vase, 1913 (above right)
Nicholson was a devoted, if underrated flower painter, who stressed the plants’ stillness and compliance. Is there a more perfect flower painting than this? It is a just-so picture, an entirely satisfying mix of harmonious colour, luscious brushwork, simplicity of composition, exquisite skill and quiet contentment
Claude Monet, Grandes
Décorations, 1914–26
Aged 70, the artist conceived a new waterlily series to form an immersive display. Despite cataracts, he painted what he saw in his ponds at Giverny on canvases so huge that he needed a special studio to house them. The works total 300ft in length and were given to the French state to commemorate the fallen of the First World War
Georgia O’keeffe, Jimson Weed/ White Flower No 1, 1932
‘When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment,’ said the painter. This hypnotic, magnified bloom emerges triffid-like to consume the viewer and was sold in 2014 for $44.4 million, making O’keeffe the world’s most expensive female artist
Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992 (below)
Mr Koons, provocateur and purveyor of expensive kitsch, fashioned this 43ft-tall West Highland terrier flower sculpture for the entrance of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. He was making reference, he says, to Rococo gardens, but this live mass of bedding plants (watered every 24 hours by a hidden irrigation system) is less about art-historical
references than simple joy