tulip mania paintings

Here’s a really inter­est­ing paint­ing that I encoun­tered Sun­day while I was vis­it­ing the Getty Museum. It’s “The Tulip Folly,” by the 19th cen­tury French aca­d­e­mic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, who was hav­ing a big show in one of the gal­leries. (The paint­ing was on loan from Baltimore’s Wal­ters Art Museum.)

The scene takes place dur­ing the 1630s tulip mania and shows a sol­dier guard­ing a pot­ted tulip, while other troops stomp out fields of flow­er­ing bulbs. The piece was painted in 1882 dur­ing a time of eco­nomic dis­tress around the Paris Bourse Crash, a time even more eco­nom­i­cally unset­tled than our own. Gérôme was paint­ing tulips and the tulip folly alright, but he was also com­ment­ing on his own day, which saw a great stock mar­ket crash three and a half cen­turies after the col­lapse of tulip values.

While look­ing for images of this paint­ing I ran across a cou­ple other inter­est­ing depic­tions of the tulip mania. Both were painted by Dutch artists closer to the actual tulip mar­ket crash, and both paint­ings reside in Haarlem’s Frans Hals Museum.

Hen­drik Ger­ritsz Pot painted an alle­gory of Flora’s Wagon of Fools around 1640. This paint­ing shows a cart­load of tulip-deranged wackos lead­ing the com­mon work­ers into the sea. Sub­sti­tute Wall Street bankers for the tulip-snorting loonies and I think it has spe­cial res­o­nance for us today.

Jean Brueghel the Younger’s Satire of the Tulip Frenzy is even unkinder towards the par­tic­i­pants in the frenzy. They appear in the paint­ing as mon­keys. Smack!

As unflat­ter­ing as the spec­u­la­tors appear, in some ways the pre­vi­ous image of Flora’s wagon comes off as being a stronger indict­ment of the dam­age done to a gen­eral pop­u­la­tion by a mon­eyed elite. Still, Brueghel’s mon­keys are pretty wild and I like his work bet­ter as a painting.

Some­times I feel a lit­tle silly chas­ing after an unusual plant that I absolutely must have. (If you hear of a land run on San Diego rag­weed, I might have some­thing to do with it…) Maybe these images, com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of our cur­rent eco­nomic times, will slap a lit­tle bit of san­ity into me.

August 04 2010 06:45 am | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: • • • • •

7 Responses to “tulip mania paintings”

  1. Susan Morrison on 04 Aug 2010 at 8:01 am #

    I doubt you’ve ever been tempted to pay the kind of prices that led to the tulip mar­ket col­lapse. And then next time you feel guilty about your hobby, just repeat this plant mantra over and over to your­self “at least they’re not beanie babies.”

  2. Jean on 04 Aug 2010 at 3:31 pm #

    Fas­ci­nat­ing, James. I agree with Susan. While my usual reac­tion to the col­lect­ing impulse (beanie babies, salt shak­ers, snow globes, or what­ever) is that I don’t “get it,” at least plants are liv­ing beings that grow, change and repro­duce — and those bro­ken tulips of the tulip mania really were beautiful.

  3. ricki - sprig to twig on 04 Aug 2010 at 4:43 pm #

    Eye-opening post, James…and you sum­ma­rized with exactly the thoughts I had while read­ing it. But san­ity in a plant nerd? Nah.

  4. Carol on 05 Aug 2010 at 4:41 am #

    It was an insane time and brought many a house­hold to ruina­tion… not so ter­ri­bly unlike our spec­u­la­tors mar­ket these days. Only this was a real com­mod­ity and a beau­ti­ful one at that. Of course only for the rich, whereas today many mid­dle class folks lost their life sav­ings. Very inter­est­ing post James. I love see­ing these old paint­ings. ;>)

  5. lostlandscape on 06 Aug 2010 at 9:25 pm #

    Susan, one mantra in the gallery world is “buy what you love,” mean­ing you shouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily expect any sort of appre­ci­a­tion on a pur­chase. I couldn’t imag­ine ever lov­ing beanies.

    Jean, I agree with you on the objects of the frenzy being pretty excep­tional plants. The fact that they were infected with a virus that caused the spe­cial color forms some­how seems like an appro­pri­ate metaphor that all the objects of col­lect­ing are some­how tainted.

    Ricki, I actu­ally do get a moment of san­ity every now and then, though it tends to strike AFTER I’ve come home with a cou­ple more plants than I have room for.

    Carol, I’m glad you enjoyed the paint­ings. I love how depic­tions of the past are often snap­shots of the present as well. I was read­ing that researchers weren’t quite sure how bad the tulip mania really was, but look­ing at the con­tem­po­rary Dutch paint­ings, it’s pretty clear the phe­nom­e­non was real and significant.

  6. tina on 07 Aug 2010 at 4:24 am #

    That’s wild. I knew about the tulip mania but never thought of artists depict­ing it all. Makes sense since artists were such a big part of cul­ture back then and the Dutch artists some of the most famous. Very neat. I’d love to see these in per­son. So glad you show­cased them. Yes, some­times putting plant lust into per­spec­tive makes our desires seem a bit insignif­i­cant. But still desire looms for those spe­cial plants.

  7. ryan on 07 Aug 2010 at 9:28 am #

    I knew about the tulip mania as an eco­nomic story. I didn’t know it had been painted. Very cool.

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