Jacob van Walscapelle, Flowers in a Glass Vase

The luxuriant flowers in van Walscapelle’s painting seem to loom out of the darkness. A single shaft of light makes them glow as if they exist in a magical world of their own. A distorted reflection in the glass bowl – a glimpse through a window of clouds chasing across the sky – emphasises the other-worldliness of the picture.

Earlier Dutch flower paintings are spectacular too, but stiff and formal. Van Walscapelle’s painting seems alive and moving – nature is busy. The flowers seem to nod as if a breeze has passed through, leaving leaves trailing, the petals of the striped tulip ready to drop, and a caterpillar dangling like an acrobat falling from a trapeze.

More insects dance about among the blooms. A ladybird settles for a moment on the purple peony. The white rose is alive with long-legged beetles, industrious ants, a tiny spider and a blue-bellied fly, its forelegs daintily folded. Another caterpillar, spines at the alert, explores the route from white rose to red, where limpid drops of water trickle from petal to petal. A tawny butterfly raises its wings ready to launch itself into the air. The snail, shell gleaming in a warm patch of sun, balances perilously near the edge of the stone shelf – perhaps suddenly aware of the black beetle that appears to give chase, close behind.

At first glance, the romance of the painting – the movement, the minute detail, the rich colours of the flowers, the sinuous lines that run through the picture – is what engages the eye. It takes a moment to realize that the flowers couldn‘t possibly have been in bloom at the same time. This becomes obvious – and odd – in the juxtaposition of the summer strawberries at one end of the shelf and the luscious, ripe, autumn blackberries at the other. But van Walscapelle isn’t just painting a scientific study – he’s painting a celebration of nature.

He paints fresh, spring violas, the tulip already fading to make room for summer lilies, roses and carnations. The ripe ears of wheat, their leaves and long stems already faded and brittle, straggle through the picture. They represent autumn, the end of the cycle. It’s as if we are moving through the seasons in the same dark room.

Van Walscapelle was never as successful as some of his contemporaries. He made a living from painting for a while but never reached high prices. The placing of the three roses in this picture is a little clumsy perhaps – they seem a little squashed together, with the distances between other flowers unclear. But these shortcomings are nothing compared to the skill and artistry with which he painted details – the glowing snail-shell, the reflection of the window, the delicacy of the insects, and, perhaps above all, the wet stems seen through the glass and water of the vase.

But van Walscapelle gave up painting to take a job in a municipal office in Amsterdam, leaving the ants and the spiders to go about their business and us wondering what might have been, had he continued to paint his unique vision of natural things.