The great flower painters of 17th-century Holland never painted a bouquet from a single vase, building each one flower by flower across a whole year, so one picture could hold tulips, roses, and narcissus that never bloomed at the same time. Found in Béziers, this oil still life is painted on board rather than canvas, its flowers glowing out of a deep, dark ground in that same old Dutch manner. The striped tulip near the top was the prize of those paintings, the flower that during the tulip craze of the 1630s could sell for more than a house. Sylvie leans it on a mantel in the dining room, where by candlelight the flowers seem to come up out of the dark.
