Rosewood shares more art for garden lovers

Our customers are all garden lovers, and garden lovers usually love flowers.  So we know that you’ll enjoy the 20th century flower paintings we’re sharing all through 2021.  In January we shared Andy Warhol’s Flowers, in February it was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed, and now we’d like to show you The Sunflower by Klimt, our flower art for March.

Unlike Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Gustav Klimt shows the flower growing in the garden rather than in a vase.  It’s surrounded by other flowers, but strikingly dominant over them.  He painted this work in 1907, during his ‘golden period’.  His most famous work, The Kiss, was also painted at this time.  It’s easy to see the relationship between the works.  Klimt was most well known for his portraits or female nudes.  In both, the artist painted faces, hair and bare skin naturalistically.  However he covered the rest of the painting surface with highly decorative patterns or gold leaf.  This meant that clothing and background almost merged, which made the faces stand out at the top of the painting.

The Sunflower uses the same trick. If you look at the painting you can see the resemblance to one of Klimt’s portraits.  The flower’s huge golden head stands out like a face in a portrait, and the overall shape of the plant corresponds to a human figure.

If you’d like to know more about Klimt’s work, click the following link to the Klimt Wikipedia Page.

If you’d like to read more of Rosewood’s art shares, scroll through the Blog and you’ll find approximately one a month.