Flower Painting

The Victorian taste for realism and detail meant that still life, the depiction of inanimate objects, was a popular subject. The leading still life painter of this period was William Henry Hunt, known as 'Bird's Nest Hunt' because nests commonly featured in his paintings, as seen in 'Hawthorn Blossoms and Bird's Nest' .

It is interesting that Hunt specialised in still life because of a physical infirmity that restricted his freedom to move around the countryside and sketch at will. Many women similarly focussed on still life because of restrictions, though these were social rather than physical. Elizabeth Ellet, writing in 1859, explained why media such as watercolour and subjects such as still life and flowers were particularly suited to women; 'such occupations might be pursued in the strict seclusion of home, to which custom and public sentiment assigns the fair student.

Gaining access to professional training was hard for women and it was also unacceptable for them to study the human figure in the life class. It is notable that many professional women artists were the daughter or sister of a trained artist, and that they effectively learned their profession in the home.

It is not surprising therefore that most watercolours by Victorian women in the collection of the V&A are of flowers. But it should also be noted that the Victorians genuinely had a strong aesthetic appreciation of still life and flower painting. In a surprisingly modern appraisal of a drawing of a mug by Hunt, the critic John Ruskin noted 'The whole art of painting is in that mug...If you can feel how beautiful it is, how ethereal, how heathery and heavenly, as well as to the uttermost muggy...'.

We know almost nothing about Mary Butler who painted 'Blackberry Blossom' , but it was acquired by the museum in 1878 in the middle of her successful career as a flower painter. Butler exhibited at the Royal Academy for over 25 years, from 1867 to 1893.

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