Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Still Life: Flowers

Still Life: Flowers – a bouquet that grows upward

Still Life: Flowers is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1885. The original measures 65.8 cm x 81.9 cm, is recorded under inventory number 78.2514.70 and is held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Our art reproduction Still Life with Flowers is painted by hand in oils on canvas, in eight upright sizes from 65 x 80 to 140 x 170 cm.

Anemones, a tulip and a white ribbed vessel

A large white ribbed vessel stands on a wooden table, and out of it rises a dense bouquet. Low down are white and red anemones with dark centres, above them a striped tulip and small yellow and pink flower heads, and at the very top orange crown imperials open on long stems. Behind the bouquet is a wall of regular diamond pattern, and a trellis can be made out along the left edge.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. Renoir wrote himself that working with flowers let him risk strokes of colour he would not have allowed himself in a portrait. That risk is exactly what a reproduction has to carry: the blooms are laid in quickly and densely, each with its own quantity of paint, while the vessel and the table are built calmly, in flat planes. Print returns all those different thicknesses to one.

In the room

The bouquet grows upward and the whole composition is built on the vertical, so the painting asks for height rather than width. It works above a chest of drawers, beside the entrance, or in a dining room above the table – anywhere the wall is taller than it is wide, and where some empty space is left above the painting so the bouquet can open out at the top. Above a sofa, where the wall runs horizontally, the vertical fights the space. For an average wall we suggest 100 x 130 cm, for a larger one 130 x 160 cm, with 120 x 150 cm as the step between. The smallest size, 65 x 80 cm, matches the original and suits a narrow wall or an entrance hall, where the painting is seen from close to.

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. Still Life: Flowers 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 anemones and tulips in a white ribbed vessel, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 65 x 80 cm to 140 x 170 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: Renoir recorded that working with flowers let him take risks with colour he would not have taken in a portrait

See also:

• Blonde Bather
• Bathers with a Crab
• The Large Bathers