Flower still life

By 1694, a painted bouquet like this was a luxury in Amsterdam, and Justus van Huysum ran something close to a decorating business supplying them. His flower pieces often went into whole schemes for the walls of wealthy merchant houses, made to be lived with rather than studied up close. The bouquet itself is a made-up one. Flowers that open months apart are gathered into a single vase, an arrangement that never stood on any real table and was worked up instead from separate studies. Since it left his workshop the canvas has kept moving. For most of the 20th century it belonged to a Basel foundation, the Bachofen-Burckhardt collection, and only in 2015 did it pass to the Kunstmuseum Basel, where it now carries the inventory number 1208.