Franz Xaver Petter

Private collection, Austria, acquired in the 1920s;

Thence by descent in a private collection, UK.

This painting is a tour de force of flower painting, an ode to Petter’s mastery of the genre and of his botanical frame of reference. Flowers from every season and of far-flung provenance vye for attention. There are arum lilies, native to Africa; auriculas, originally from the mountain ranges of central Europe; Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) from Brazil, as well as familiar flowers like pansies, lilac and hollyhocks. A tropical orchid nestles beside the poppy at top right. On the left, a marigold peeps behind the spray of lilac, its orange colour a vivid contrast to the lilac flowers and glossy green leaves. Some species are barely glimpsed in the complex composition. Since these flowers bloom at different times of the year, the bouquet seen here is in fact a capriccio. Petter must have composed it from drawings or watercolours he made from life, from the study of published botanical drawings, or both.

Flower painting had enjoyed a long tradition in Vienna even in the nineteenth century, owing to its world famous Porcelain Manufactory, which employed skilled porcelain painters to decorate its wares with flower still lifes. In 1812, however, in response to the increased taste for flower easel paintings in the Biedermeier period, the Vienna Academy established a school of flower painting in parallel with the Manufactory’s existing drawing school. The two schools operated collaboratively and advocated similar teaching methods, including the study of newly published illustrated botanical books on flora such as Robert John Thornton’s seminal and widely available Temple of Flora published in London between 1799 and 1804, and the drawings of the famous botanist and director of the botanical gardens of the University of Vienna, Nikolaus von Jacquin (1727–1817). Petter, born in 1791, would have been among the first intake of students to the newly founded Academy faculty under the tuition of Johann Baptist Drechsler, and in 1814 was appointed the faculty’s Korrektor (teaching assistant). He rose to become one of the most successful and sought-after flower painters of his day.