Ambrosius Bosschaert
Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge1619

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Oil painting still life, dense flower bouquet in a glass vase on a stone ledge, with a butterfly, dragonfly, shells, and a beetle, set against a landscape background

Artist or Maker: Ambrosius Bosschaert
Northern Netherlands, 1573-1621
Title: Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge
Date Made: 1619
Medium: Oil on copper
Dimensions: 11 × 9 in. (27.94 × 22.86 cm) Framed: 15 × 14 × 1 in. (38.1 × 35.56 × 2.54 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Carter
Accession Number: M.2003.108.7
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: European Painting and Sculpture
Curatorial Notes: Ambrosius Bosschaert’s master class in still-life floral painting presents an intimate, highly detailed, colorful bouquet standing before an open vista, with only a hint of urban life in the distance. A glass prunt vase holds identifiable flowers: tulip, rose, iris, yellow fritillaria, daffodil, liverwort, forget-me-not, bluebell, and lily of the valley. Bugs land on flowers, and one crawls toward a single fallen carnation on the ledge. Although each stem is rendered with seemingly observational precision, Bosschaert would not have painted this bouquet directly from life. Many of these flowers bloomed at different times of the year and were not all native to the Netherlands. The artist likely relied on drawings, prints, or previous paintings of specific flowers to construct his harmonious composition. In addition to sketching flora in person, he would have used florilegia—scientific and commercial books cataloguing different types of flowers—for inspiration. Bosschaert’s choice to set the vase on a ledge without any architectural framing may also have been a visual device derived from print sources.

At the time of the painting’s creation, Dutch society was in the midst of commercial and colonial expansion, with entities like the Dutch East India Company importing products from around the globe. The port city of Middelburg, where Bosschaert was based, served as an arrival point for the company’s mercantile goods into European markets. His still life features two shells that evince this commercial activity, a Conus marmoreus from the Indian Ocean and a Polymita picta from Cuba, both extracted using Indigenous and enslaved labor and sold by Dutch traders. The painting represents parallel strands in the contemporary Dutch zeitgeist—the desire to collect and know the natural world, and the potential for religious and social signification of those earthly specimens in visual culture.
Provenance: Ulric Palm, Stockholm, before 1934, sold through;(1) [G. Stenman, Stockholm, to]; Dr. Einar Perman (1893–1976), Stockholm, by 1936. Anne-Marie (Mrs. John) Goelet (1900–1988), New York and Amblainville, Oise, France, in 1963.(2) Private collection, Boston, 1966–67. [Newhouse Galleries, New York, sold 1976 to]; Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter, Los Angeles, given 2003 to; LACMA.

Footnotes

(1) Amsterdam 1934 identifies the lender as a private collection in Stockholm, previously Palm. According to a letter dated 26 January 1984 from Dr. Einar Perman to Mr. and Mrs. Carter (Bosschaert object file, Department of European Painting and Sculpture, LACMA), Ulric Palm was for a long time the art adviser to Bukowski, the leading art gallery of Stockholm. Palm was a good friend of Perman, who purchased the painting from Palm through the dealer Stenman.

(2)The Goelet family lived in France and New York.A letter dated 23 December 1981 from the still-life scholar Ingvar Bergstrom to Scott Schaeffer, then curator of European paintings at LACMA (Bosschaert object file, Department of European Painting and Sculpture, LACMA) remarks that he had known the painting for "nearly fifty years. I am glad now to know its present whereabouts."
Selected Bibliography: Walsh, Jr., John., and Cynthis P. Schneider. A Mirror of Nature: Dutch Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter (Second Edition). Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992.
Spicer, Joaneath A., and Lynn Federle Orr. Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Baltimore: The Walters Art Galler, 1997.
Pennisi, Meghan. "The Flower Sill-life Painting of Ambrosius Bosschaert, the Elder, in Middelburg, ca. 1600-1620." PhD diss., Northwestern Univeristy, 2007.
Luijten, Ger, and Ariane van Suchtelen, eds. Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1993.
King, Jennifer, ed. Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2020.
Duparc, Frederik J. Dutch and Flemish Masterworks: From the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, a Supplement to Golden. Boston: MFA Publications, 2020.
Walsh, Amy L. The Mr. and Mrs. Edward Carter Collection of Dutch Paintings. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019. https://archive.org/details/Carter_Collection_Dutch_Paintings (accessed May 23, 2022).
Zumaya, Diva. The World Made Wondrous: the Dutch Collector's Cabinet and the Politics of Possession. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.
Raguin, Virginia Chieffo. Stained Glass before 1700 in the Collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J.Paul Getty Museum. Vol. 1, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. London: Harvey Miller Publishers for American Corpus Vitrearum, Inc., 2024.

Related Unframed

Ambrosius Bosschaert
Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge1619

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Artist or Maker: Ambrosius Bosschaert
Northern Netherlands, 1573-1621
Title: Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge
Date Made: 1619
Medium: Oil on copper
Dimensions: 11 × 9 in. (27.94 × 22.86 cm) Framed: 15 × 14 × 1 in. (38.1 × 35.56 × 2.54 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Carter
Accession Number: M.2003.108.7
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: European Painting and Sculpture
Curatorial Notes: Ambrosius Bosschaert’s master class in still-life floral painting presents an intimate, highly detailed, colorful bouquet standing before an open vista, with only a hint of urban life in the distance. A glass prunt vase holds identifiable flowers: tulip, rose, iris, yellow fritillaria, daffodil, liverwort, forget-me-not, bluebell, and lily of the valley. Bugs land on flowers, and one crawls toward a single fallen carnation on the ledge. Although each stem is rendered with seemingly observational precision, Bosschaert would not have painted this bouquet directly from life. Many of these flowers bloomed at different times of the year and were not all native to the Netherlands. The artist likely relied on drawings, prints, or previous paintings of specific flowers to construct his harmonious composition. In addition to sketching flora in person, he would have used florilegia—scientific and commercial books cataloguing different types of flowers—for inspiration. Bosschaert’s choice to set the vase on a ledge without any architectural framing may also have been a visual device derived from print sources.

At the time of the painting’s creation, Dutch society was in the midst of commercial and colonial expansion, with entities like the Dutch East India Company importing products from around the globe. The port city of Middelburg, where Bosschaert was based, served as an arrival point for the company’s mercantile goods into European markets. His still life features two shells that evince this commercial activity, a Conus marmoreus from the Indian Ocean and a Polymita picta from Cuba, both extracted using Indigenous and enslaved labor and sold by Dutch traders. The painting represents parallel strands in the contemporary Dutch zeitgeist—the desire to collect and know the natural world, and the potential for religious and social signification of those earthly specimens in visual culture.
Provenance: Ulric Palm, Stockholm, before 1934, sold through;(1) [G. Stenman, Stockholm, to]; Dr. Einar Perman (1893–1976), Stockholm, by 1936. Anne-Marie (Mrs. John) Goelet (1900–1988), New York and Amblainville, Oise, France, in 1963.(2) Private collection, Boston, 1966–67. [Newhouse Galleries, New York, sold 1976 to]; Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter, Los Angeles, given 2003 to; LACMA.

Footnotes

(1) Amsterdam 1934 identifies the lender as a private collection in Stockholm, previously Palm. According to a letter dated 26 January 1984 from Dr. Einar Perman to Mr. and Mrs. Carter (Bosschaert object file, Department of European Painting and Sculpture, LACMA), Ulric Palm was for a long time the art adviser to Bukowski, the leading art gallery of Stockholm. Palm was a good friend of Perman, who purchased the painting from Palm through the dealer Stenman.

(2)The Goelet family lived in France and New York.A letter dated 23 December 1981 from the still-life scholar Ingvar Bergstrom to Scott Schaeffer, then curator of European paintings at LACMA (Bosschaert object file, Department of European Painting and Sculpture, LACMA) remarks that he had known the painting for "nearly fifty years. I am glad now to know its present whereabouts."
Selected Bibliography: Walsh, Jr., John., and Cynthis P. Schneider. A Mirror of Nature: Dutch Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter (Second Edition). Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1992.
Spicer, Joaneath A., and Lynn Federle Orr. Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Baltimore: The Walters Art Galler, 1997.
Pennisi, Meghan. "The Flower Sill-life Painting of Ambrosius Bosschaert, the Elder, in Middelburg, ca. 1600-1620." PhD diss., Northwestern Univeristy, 2007.
Luijten, Ger, and Ariane van Suchtelen, eds. Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1993.
King, Jennifer, ed. Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2020.
Duparc, Frederik J. Dutch and Flemish Masterworks: From the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection, a Supplement to Golden. Boston: MFA Publications, 2020.
Walsh, Amy L. The Mr. and Mrs. Edward Carter Collection of Dutch Paintings. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2019. https://archive.org/details/Carter_Collection_Dutch_Paintings (accessed May 23, 2022).
Zumaya, Diva. The World Made Wondrous: the Dutch Collector's Cabinet and the Politics of Possession. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.
Raguin, Virginia Chieffo. Stained Glass before 1700 in the Collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J.Paul Getty Museum. Vol. 1, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. London: Harvey Miller Publishers for American Corpus Vitrearum, Inc., 2024.