Still Life with Plum Blossoms in an Oriental Vase

Charles Caryl Coleman's small series of floral still lifes is a unique manifestation of the keen interest of classically trained artists for the decorative arts. As the Aesthetic Movement swept Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth century, many artists felt at liberty to explore new media and inventive formats. Like other artists of the Aesthetic Movement, Coleman had a strong tendency to work with elements of both the decorative and fine arts in a single composition.

Coleman's artistic training consisted of painting classes in the United States as well as Europe. He worked briefly in New York for three years after serving in the Civil War, and later moved to Italy where he painted Still Life with Plum Blossoms in an Oriental Vase. "In 1886 Coleman purchased the former guest house of a convent on the island of Capri and converted it into his home and studio. His Villa Narcissus was an architectural palimpsest of Roman, Pompeian, Moorish, and Mediterranean details to which Coleman added mosaic tiles, stained glass, and wrought-iron grille-work of his own design. He was an avid collector of decorative objects: period photographs depict the artist dressed in Arabian costume and his home filled with marble reliefs, ancient glass, ornamental Renaissance panels, terracotta vessels, and Turkish tapestries." (C.H. Vorsanger in In Pursuit of Beauty, New York, 1986, p. 410)

This rich atmosphere no doubt influenced Coleman's creative still lifes. Similar to Coleman's other works of the same period, Still Life with Plum Blossoms in an Oriental Vase features an eclectic array of decorative items arranged in a tight composition. The delicate branches with their vibrant flowers lunge dramatically upwards from the mouth of an elaborately patterned blue and white vase. The still life is set off by the Oriental textiles that hang in the background and cover the supporting surface. As an avid collector of decorative arts, Coleman was certainly inspired by the various possibilities afforded him by the wonderful objects that he collected.

One of the most important works in Coleman's small series is Apple Blossoms (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) which bears a frame almost identical to that accompanying Still Life with Plum Blossoms in an Oriental Vase. The decorative carving is in low relief, with a scrolling foliate pattern that echoes the patterns featured in the painting. Not willing to allow the frame to be dictated by another person, Coleman designed his own frames. "During the Aesthetic period, as numbers of artists began to realize that the frame was an extension of the art it contained, they began to design frames for their own works... Both artists and decorators came to realize that framed easel paintings would not just be viewed in relation to the space they occupied but would also effect how that space would be perceived. The unity of the interior, so strongly emphasized in aesthetic rooms, inevitably extended to the framing and display of pictures... Projecting picture frames with elaborate, three-dimensional decoration would have disturbed the total effect of that backdrop. While heavy, ornate frames remained popular throughout the period, particularly for academic European paintings, a new standard for frames evolved. Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Elihu Vedder, and Charles Caryl Coleman were some of the forward-thinking designers, architects, and painters who devised frames that were more harmonious with the new interiors. Reflecting an admiration for Japanese design and Italian Renaissance models and inspired by frames designed by the Pre-Raphaelites, aesthetic-style frames were wider, flatter, and more rectilinear, with restrained ornamentation that was often only two-dimensional." (D.B. Burke, "Painters and Sculptors in a Decorative Age" in In Pursuit of Beauty, p. 320)