What to do or say at times like these? Keeping our hearts open and embracing moments of joy, however small, feels important.
My daughter bought a bunch of pink hyacinths this week which filled the kitchen with their distinctive and delicious scent. Harbingers of spring in all its new and various colours. I have been busy preparing for a new talk on the language of flowers in art in which the hyacinth plays an important role. The flower’s huge popularity was driven by its cultivation and planting in the gardens at Versailles during the reign of Louis XV. It was however, the influence of the King’s official mistress, Madame de Pompadour, that was instrumental in the hyacinth's rise to floral pre-eminence.
The hyacinth's popularity was at its peak in the middle of the 18th century in France. The craze for tulips was over and Louis XV spent a fortune importing hyacinths from the Netherlands and had his vast parterres replanted with 403 bulbs and 25 varieties. But it was Madame de Pompadour who championed growing them indoors. It is reported that she had as many as 200 bulbs growing indoors at any one time. Indoor cultivation could be achieved by planting the bulb in a stemmed vase above water so that the roots would develop in it. Pompadour had them placed near doors and windows in her houses and apartments where the scent would be intoxicating. This practice quickly led to a craze for bulb pots which was met by the nimble and inventive porcelain designers and manufacturers, newly relocated at Sevres, near Pomapdour’s favourite residence at Bellevue.
Pink became the ultimate fashionable colour of the age.. A new variant of the brazilin dye had begun to be imported from South America which led to such unprecedented demand that a whole country is named after it. This new dye produced pinks richer and longer lasting than previous variants from India and Sumatra. The culture of fashion in France put a tremendous value on novelty - it was said of the French courts of Louis XV and XVI that a new fashion was invented every day.
Madame de Pompadour helped to promote pink as a colour and commissioned many items of clothing, porcelain and painting which made highly prominent use of the colour. It was Pompadour who introduced the pairing of pink with the distinctive green and blue colours produced by the royal porcelain manufacturers at Vincennes and then at Sevres. Items such as bulb pots and pot pourri vessels became wildly coveted and collected by men as well as women. Men and women both wore pink and there was no sense that wearing the colour was gender-assigned.
The middle of the 18th century also saw a flourishing of botanical and other scientific illustration in Europe. High value was placed on curiosity and experimentation and the goals of artists and scientists often intertwined.
Before photography, visual records of plants were made for identification and classification by artists - many of which were women. One of the most notable botanical artists of the period was Madeleine Françoise Basseporte who became the first woman to hold the post of Official Painter to the royal gardens at Versailles. Part of this role was to produce illustrations for the Vélins du Roi, a compendium of plant and animal illustrations begun in 1631 to maintain an inventory of the royal natural history collections.
Basseporte also produced illustrations for Madame de Pompadour which included blooms from her gardens at the Chateau Bellevue. Basseporte would often work outdoors to capture the flowers in their prime. The Pompadour was so impressed by Basseporte's work that she negotiated an increase in her salary from the king. In turn, Basseporte taught the next generation of French female flower artists, including two daughters of Louis XV. She also employed young women from local orphanages as her assistants and left art supplies to them in her will.
Basseporte’s floral illustrations for Madame de Pompadour are contained within a specially designed red and gold border. The floral specimens are adeptly painted in watercolour and often enlivened by insects such as spiders, beetles and butterflies. Her floral images for her mistress have a distinctive feminine touch, with a pink bow around the stems and sometimes the flowers extend beyond the picture frame in an exciting artistic flourish.
The Rococo style is currently undergoing a feminist re-evaluation which I am fascinated to see. I have been a fan of the style since being transfixed by the painting of the pierrot, sometimes called Gilles, by Watteau in the Louvre* many years ago. My parents had taken us there as a family and my gaucheness as a 14 year old seemed to find some empathy in the sad clown caught on the anxious borderline between artifice and reality. I had always felt guilty about my pleasure in the Rococo, intimidated, perhaps, by the criticism it has attracted as elitist and frivolous. This, I am now learning, was part of an Enlightenment plot to obscure the agency of female patrons as instigators of style and taste. Pompadour was one of the most prominent champions of art of the French 18th century, as a prodigious consumer certainly, but she also possessed an inquisitive and creative mind, commissioning porcelain, jewels and paintings tailored to her own designs. Great patrons of art are often also pioneers of gardening - an appreciation of beauty and form is common to both. The hyacinth represented an enlightened and modern interest in botany as well as becoming an icon of modern fashion and sophisticated taste.
Spring, as David Hockney has pointed out, cannot be cancelled.
Image credits:
Sevres porcelain 1757-58 - Royal Collection Trust
Madame de Pompadour - Francois Boucher 1758 - Victoria & Albert Museum
A Gentleman in Valetta c.1750s - Antoine de Vavray (Private Collection -courtesy of Christies)
Madeleine Françoise Basseporte (1701-1780) - Hyacinth illustration - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
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