Floral Still Life, 18th-Century, Oil on Canvas, Framed

This is a magnificent antique Dutch School floral still life oil on canvas painting with a stunning gilt gesso frame, late 18th century in date. This splendid painting is rectangular in shape and features brightly illuminated pastel-tinted roses and bi-coloured Carnations and Honeysuckle arranged against a ruined wall with trees in the background. Great attention has been paid to individual elements in the bouquet. Indeed each petal has been painted with diligent conscientious precision. It is housed in its magnificent original giltwood frame. Add this splendid antique Dutch painting to a very special wall in your home. Provenance: Property of Archibald Stirling of Keir Condition: In excellent condition the painting and frame having been beautifully cleaned in our workshops, please see photos for confirmation. Dimensions in cm: Height 55 x width 88 x depth 5 - frame Height 39 x width 72 - canvas Dimensions in inches: Height 1 foot, 10 inches x width 2 foot, 11 inches x depth 2 inches - frame Height 1 foot, 3 inches x width 2 foot, 4 inches - canvas Archibald Hugh Stirling, Laird of Keir (born 18 September 1941) is a Scottish theatrical producer, a former officer in the Scots Guards,and Laird of the Keir estate at Lecropt in the Stirling council area in Scotland. A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural food, flowers, dead animals, plants, or man-made drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry. With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Graeco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialisation in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. A still life form gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Some modern still life work breaks the two dimensional barrier and employs three dimensional mixed media, and uses found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound. The term includes the painting of dead animals, especially game. Live ones are considered animal art, although in practice they were often painted from dead models. The still life category also shares commonalities with zoological and especially botanical illustration, where there has been considerable overlap among artists. Generally a still life includes a fully depicted background, and puts aesthetic rather than illustrative concerns as primary.