Statement:

“Bouquets of Glimmering Flowers in Fading Vases over Frames” is an installation of paintings, plasterwork ornamentations and furniture by Shahrzad Jahan at Electric Room. The installation focuses on bringing together numerous studies the artist made based on and inspired by a single painting, the 1670s oil-on-canvas “Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase” by the Dutch painter Maria van Oosterwyck (1630–1693).

Shahrzad’s process began with an encounter with the painting, its elaborate composition and elements, as well as masterful technique and execution. Going over on the experience, the artist writes: “I have been bewitched by this image and lived through its blooms, the decay and flourish that dances around, in the lily, the sunflower, the petite blue flowers. I have painted this image time and time over until it has become unrecognizable. It has been both a daily practice as well as a revolving experience over time. Even though each image was done in a day it was tangled to the one before and the one coming after and none of them repeated the other one even though this was my intention at first”.///

The original painting and the artistic life of its creator Maria van Oosterwyck remain unique in the specific time and region and within the course of European art history. Women could not become members in the guilds of painters, but she found her own path towards marketing her work. She was a devout artist as well as one that became commercially-successful. Earlier in her career, she employed the service of an agent that sold her pieces to German buyers, and over time her following and market grew exponentially. Her work was widely collected, even extensively acquired by courts of European monarchs.

The particular piece, “Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase”, was created during a time when the Dutch had a deep fascination with flowers, owing to their rarity and high cost, as seeds and bulbs had to be imported from distant lands. Many of the flower paintings of the time aimed to show variety and diversity since people attributed a high value to this practice, believing that beauty could be achieved through the depiction of variety. In Maria van Oosterwyck’s “Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase”, this variety includes “the portrayal of many different types of blossoms, the inclusion of foliage, the positioning of the flowers, and the inclusion of plants in different stages of growth and decay*”.

The artist’s technical prowess as well as her creative vision is especially evident in this painting and its composition. The composition is very elaborate, with the image comprising many layers, depths, and details, skillfully brought together with intricate plays of light, shadow and reflection. Moreover, it is noteworthy that “the bouquet in this painting would have been impossible to construct in real life because the flowers bloom in different seasons. Tulips, for example, bloom in the spring, while sunflowers bloom in the summer. Oosterwyck would have assembled this image of a fantasy bouquet from individual sketches she made in outdoor gardens [perhaps over several seasons or years]*”.

* Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase | Denver Art Museum. (n.d.). https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/edu/object/bouquet-flowers-vase