Tour de France

"French flower painters of the 19th century. A Dictionary" is a voluminous book by Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier and Etienne Grafe. Peter Mitchell is listed as editor.

The authors were originally connoisseurs of flower paintings of the "Lyon school", but later extended their operations to cover all of 19th century France. Apparently, the Lyon school was part of the "Neo-Dutch" tradition. Ironically, it was the Napoleonic conquest of the Netherlands which gave Dutch flower painting a new spur forward, since wealthy French patrons became interested in this local art style. The Napoleon-imposed Queen of Holland, Hortense, was an amateur flower painter herself and promoted the genre in various ways.

So far the introductory chapters. The bulk of the book is a dictionary of hundreds of mostly unknown painters, with short presentations and references. Some entries show representative paintings of the artist in question. Most of them are trivial, and most are reproduced in black-and-white only. A few colour plates have been included.

This book is really a reference work, useful for art collectors, auction houses and perhaps very specialized libraries. It's not for the general art-lover and could even be considered exceedingly boring! Still, it's a tour de force (or tour de France?) in its own genre, and I therefore graciously award it four stars.