Abraham Mignon united this decorative floral piece through the free-flowing rhythms of flowers, fruits, and grains that hang from a blue satin bow. With crystalline clarity and an exquisite sense of design, he arranged blossoms in such a way that their various shapes and vivid colors complement one another with an easy naturalness. At the center of the composition are the large forms and pale colors of the white viburnum, the light pink carnation, and the white and red variegated tulip. Smaller orange red poppies, crab apple blossoms, Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi), amaranthus, and long grains of wheat surround these flowers. While the bouquet hangs gracefully, the composition overall has an energetic feel because of the way the various flowers, including the morning glory, yellow rose, and the blue love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), turn back upon themselves as they reach up to the light.
Mignon painted a large number of such hanging bouquets, sometimes focused on flowers, sometimes on fruit. Although they are essentially decorative ensembles, complete with requisite insects to add to their illusionistic character, they derive from a tradition that began in a far more serious vein. The origins of such hanging bouquets are to be found at the beginning of the seventeenth century in paintings by Daniel Seghers (1590–1661). By the mid-1620s Seghers had established a specialty in which he painted garlands of flowers hanging from ribbons around a painted image of an altarpiece. Seghers, a devout Jesuit, developed his concept from the floral garlands painted by his teacher, Jan Brueghel the Elder (Flemish, 1568 - 1625), but also from the church practice of surrounding altarpieces with garlands of live flowers.
Seghers’ innovation was widely emulated in Flemish art. Paintings of flowers and fruits surrounding illusionistically painted sculptures and religious scenes were executed by a number of Flemish artists, among them Joris van Son (1623–1667), Jan Pauwels Gillemans I (1618–c. 1675), Frans Ykens (1613–c. 1679), and, most significantly in this context, Mignon’s teacher, Jan Davidsz de Heem (Dutch, 1606 - 1684). All of these artists, moreover, followed Seghers’ practice of choosing flowers and fruits that were imbued with symbolism related to the religious image at the center of their compositions. De Heem expanded upon this genre in two basic ways. Occasionally he depicted a single bouquet of fruit or flowers (or combination thereof) hanging from a stone niche holding various religious objects, thus shifting the focus of the painting from a centrally placed religious image to the floral/fruit arrangement. Sometimes, De Heem would remove the religious component of the scene entirely. A number of his paintings depict garlands of flowers or fruit hanging from blue ribbons before an otherwise empty painted stone niche.
In this painting, Mignon has removed even those vague references to the origins of this pictorial genre that remained in De Heem’s garland paintings. A Hanging Bouquet of Flowers lacks any reference to the central devotional character of Seghers’ paintings, and all references to a niche have been eliminated as well. The blue ribbon that holds the festoon is all that remains from the earlier tradition. Despite this adaptation in the character of the motif, the strong relationship of this work with De Heem’s paintings suggests that Mignon probably executed it in the late 1660s, shortly after he left De Heem’s workshop.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
