Un vase de fleurs

Almost nothing by this painter survives. Margaretha Haverman has just two firmly attributed works today, and this is one of them, signed and dated 1716. She had trained in the Netherlands under Jan van Huysum, the most celebrated flower painter of the age and so secretive about his methods that he taught almost no one. Haverman was an exception. She later reached Paris and was admitted to the Royal Academy there, a rare thing for a woman, then just as quickly expelled, for reasons no record explains. What is left is this dense, exact bouquet, every petal and dewdrop rendered in the manner van Huysum guarded so jealously.