Composition 21

Another homage to the tulip, more workaday at first glance, with its rough, fabric backdrop, the sprouting bulbs, the soil and the gardener’s tools to plant and nurture the flowers.

No porcelain bowl for these beauties, just a simple wicker basket, lined with humble cabbage leaves. A portrait of tulips in the potting shed, perhaps, before they come upstairs to adorn a glorious inlaid table in a smart Amsterdam burgher’s house.

But don’t be deceived.
The sheer number of blooms, exploding, cascading. The lavishness of their colours, their patterns. The variety of their shapes and form. And those innocuous looking blubs. What would they be worth in the days of tulipmania? As much as the house itself?

This image captures the essence of the tulip, apparently so ubiquitous – and possibly innocuous – but with a richness and a power to seduce like no other flower.