Tak met een zonnebloem 1714 - 1760

Michiel van Huysum made this watercolor of a sunflower sometime in the first half of the 18th century. The image is modest, a simple rendering of a single flower against a blank background. But don’t be fooled by its simplicity. During the Dutch Golden Age, there was enormous interest in botany and natural history. The sunflower, an import from the Americas, would have been an exotic marvel, a showy specimen to collect and study. Botanical illustration was a science as much as an art, and the images produced played a key role in circulating knowledge. It's worth remembering that museums, scientific societies, and botanical gardens were all on the rise in the 1700s, reshaping the way people saw the natural world. You can learn more about this history of science by consulting printed books, museum collections, and the correspondence of scientists. The history of art is richer when we consider these wider institutional and intellectual contexts.