Glazen vaasje met rode Dahlia 1867 - 1935

Maurits van der Valk made this image of a red Dahlia in a glass vase, but when, we're not sure! I wonder whether he mixed his colours intuitively, letting the flower emerge from the brushstrokes? It’s fun to imagine him, brush in hand, leaning in to see all the subtle shifts of colour and light. I’m thinking about that red, how it almost vibrates against the neutral ground, making the petals look velvety, thick, and soft. Each stroke reads like a gesture. Look at how he used tiny strokes to build the form of the flower, compared to the longer strokes describing the cylindrical shape of the vase. Van der Valk would have been part of a conversation among artists, inspired by impressionism and the Dutch masters alike. I imagine that artists are always in conversation, bouncing ideas off each other across time. They take turns, riffing on one another’s visual ideas, and making something new in the process. This little picture makes me want to go to my studio right now and mix up a big pile of red!