Drawings & Watercolours
Study of a Tulip (Wit en root boode)
Still LifeDrawing
Details
- Author / creator
- Pieter Holsteyn II (Dutch, c.1612–1673)
- Object type
- Watercolour
- Date or period
- c. 1645
- Dimensions summary
- Sheet: 31.2 × 20.6 cm
- Place of origin
- Netherlands
- Acquisition method
- Purchase
- Credit line
- Purchased with the National Heritage Memorial Fund, 2020
- Paper / support
- Wove paper
About this object
This image of a tulip was made as part of a tulip book used as a grower’s marketing tool during the so-called tulip mania, a speculative bubble in 17th-century Holland, when ten tulip bulbs could cost more than a stately Amsterdam canal house. The striations on the tulip, which were caused by a virus in the bulb, made it especially valuable. Pieter Holsteyn II was one of many artists in the Netherlands at the time who specialized in botanical illustration.This tulip's Dutch name, inscribed on the sheet, means "white and red messenger."
Materials and technique
Point of brush and transparent and opaque watercolors with traces of graphite and gum glazing on antique laid paper
