Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot

Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot – two sunflowers above white blooms

Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot is a work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made around 1869. The original measures 64.8 x 54.3 cm, is catalogued as 48.592 and hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Our canvas wall art Mixed Flowers is painted by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 60 x 70 to 120 x 150 cm.

The museum’s own record supplies the most interesting fact: this is Renoir’s closest collaboration with Monet. The two painted the same still life sitting side by side before the arrangement, and Monet’s version is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The original is not on canvas but on paperboard mounted on canvas.

A dark ground pushing the flowers forward

A tall, loosely built bouquet stands at the centre in a blue-and-white earthenware pot. Two yellow sunflowers ride at the top and left; below them are white and cream chrysanthemums and dahlias, pale violet-blue blooms, and a dense scatter of red, orange and pink zinnias low in the mass. The ground is deep brown-black at the left and a cooler grey-violet at the right, so the flowers read as light against dark. Three pears lie on the grey-blue cloth in front.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The blooms are set down in dense, short loads of paint that stay separately visible, while the dark ground is laid broad and thin. A hand-painted painting keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

A dark ground and light flowers make a strong effect, so the subject repays hanging in a dining room, a living room or an entrance hall, and equally on a darker wall where lighter subjects get lost. On a modest wall 75 x 90 cm is enough, on a large one 100 x 120 cm; on a tall wall 120 x 150 cm works, with 110 x 130 cm as the step before. Under 60 x 70 cm the sunflowers and the white blooms beneath them merge into a single light patch.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: bouquet of mixed flowers in a blue-and-white earthenware pot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 60 x 70 cm to 120 x 150 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the ground is dark, not empty – it is what gives the flowers a brightness they would not otherwise have

See also:

• Chrysanthemums
• Still Life with Bouquet and Fan
• Luncheon of the Boating Party