Flower Still Life with a Timepiece

Abraham van Beijeren painted this striking flower still life with swift movements. He set down the reflection of the window in the vase with just a couple of brushstrokes on the canvas. Despite the rapid execution, all the flowers are recognisable: tulips, roses and carnations. But these flowers don’t all bloom at the same time, which means that this bouquet could never actually have existed.

Van Beijeren’s painting style wasn’t particularly popular for flower still lifes. His contemporaries preferred smoothly painted bouquets, for which they were also prepared to pay more. Perhaps this explains Van Beijeren’s limited financial success: his name regularly appears in the archives as a debtor.