Poppies in a vase

In the year 1880, Menso Kamerlingh Onnes left the polytechnic in Delft to pursue a career as a painter. After visiting several capitals throughout Europe, he settled in Leiden in 1883, not receiving any further artistic training. Around this date, the artist executed his first paintings and watercolours, of which the portraits and figure studies clearly betray his lack of academic background. Menso Kamerlingh Onnes nevertheless made tremendous stylistic and technical progress, creating his renowned flower and fruit still lifes by the year 1889. From 1888 till 1892 the artist shared a studio on the Vreewijkstraat with one of the principal representatives of the so called Leidse School, Floris Verster. Floris Verster, who later married Kamerlingh Onnes' sister Jenny, was deeply impressed by his greatly composed still lifes, even sometimes letting Kamerlingh Onnes arrange his own. It was during this period of close collaboration that a distinct shift in Kamerlingh Onnes' work also displayed itself. Inspired by the characteristic foreshortening of Japanse prints, exhibited at the World Exhibition in paris 1867, the artist started to frontally place his still lifes against a strong sloping background. The present lot clearly illustrates this compositinal change. Kamerlingh Onnes' interest in the symbolic nature of contemporary literature furthermore incited him to give his still lifes titles such as Maanlicht, Herfst, Echte Weelde and Valse Weelde. Onnes 'bloemverbeeldingen' (flower impressions), as he called them himself, are all rendered with the same loose impressionistic brushstroke and stand out due to their daring palette. The use of the colour black indicating Kamerlingh Onnes' unconventional approach to the medium of watercolour.