The Language of Flowers

Current hang of the Fine Art Galleries at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery focusing on paintings featuring flowers.

Because the gallery has such a large picture collection and to keep the display fresh the museum regularly rehangs their Fine Art Galleries on different themes. The current theme of flowers is wide ranging and delightful. It includes classic Dutch floral pictures, pictures featuring flowers in the composition and abstract flower pictures. The descriptions on the pictures are excellent with one flower from each picture being featured.

There was a lovely Edward La Bas picture of flowers in a vase with a pile of books and a delightful picture by Ethel Gabain called “The Nymph” of a nude woman dressed in flowers which were in the same colours as her skin. I also liked “Blackberries and Sunflowers” by Elizabeth Jane Lloyd where the flowers are strewn across a table with lemons in a bowl and eggs, great use of yellow.

My favourite was a tiny picture by Arthur Hacker of a meadow of daisies. It’s almost abstract in style with just specks on white on green but your eye tells you what it is.

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