Even if you’re not an art enthusiast, you’ve definitely heard of Monet’s The
Artist’s Garden at Giverny. It was painted in the end of the 19th century and represents a social change and a revolution to gender equality in visual arts history, not because of the fancy name its painter holds but the visibility he brought to nature and flowers paintings by men.
Nature can be described by the physical universe, everything around us is
nature. Vision is the summary of visual arts, painters always adopted the capacity of seeing as a basis for inspiration and framework for their art. Flowers were somehow always used in art on the ground that each one was not only an object in the artwork but expressed a meaning behind it. During the period of classical art flowers were used as allegories, in the Victorian era they were used against censorship, then the realism period had society reconnecting with the idea of nature, and finally in the 20th century flowers were a crucial point and a huge source of inspiration for artists.
Around the 19th century flowers were a symbol of feminine art and were only
used for practice paintings at the male-dominated art academies. They outset during the realism movement, characterized by detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life in art. The principles of realism were veracious to the principles of art —that were only stated later in the same century—, which are balance, emphasis, movement, proportion, rhythm, unity, and variety, making the movement visually pleasing for upper class and the art society.
As a result of the honored and prestigious names behind painted flowers in
realism, society opened their minds to the idea of “women and feminine art” and started accepting female names into the movement. Unfortunately not all those became applauded, but the notorious woman of the era is Elin Danielson-Gambogi, the Finnish painter claimed to be one of the first generation of Finnish female artists to receive professional education in art. Her well-known artwork is After the Breakfast, but some of her other paintings include plants, like the so-called In the Vineyard and In the Vineyard II.
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