[A Group of Three Watercolours of Hyacinths].

£18,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

Pieter Van Loo (or Loon), Haarlem 1731-1784, was a noted flower painter who spent the whole of his life in Haarlem. His paintings are sought after and are found in leading institutions such as the Albertina in Vienna, the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, and Oak Spring, Virginia. We are grateful to Polly Nicholson, author of The Tulip Garden, and holder of the national historic tulips collection, for providing more details on these watercolours: The original species hyacinths are native to the eastern Mediterranean, and, like tulips, were collected in their thousands from the wild and hybridised by successive Ottoman emperors; their elegant sprays are a recurring motif of Iznikware from the 1500s. Reaching Western Europe in the sixteenth-century, they were grown by Carolus Clusius at the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden (c.1593), and were illustrated in Gerard's Herbal of 1597 Crispin de Passe's Hortus Floridus of 1615. By the end of the eighteenth century the hyacinth had become a popular 'Florists' flower', that was exhibited at flower shows in England, and also beloved of gardeners who grew it in borders or forced it indoors. Today historic hyacinths can still be seen at Hortus Bulborum, a living museum of tulips, narcissus and hyacinths at Limmen, north of Amsterdam; this is where I first chanced upon the old varieties, when on a trip to see tulips. The hyacinth holds the honour of being the only flower described in the novels of Jane Austen, appearing in Northanger Abbey 'I have just l

• Binding: Hardcover

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