Roses, carnations, tulips and other flowers in a gold sculpted urn with peaches and grapes on a stone ledge with butterflies, in a niche

Johann Baptist Drechsler was the leading still-life painter in Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century. He began his artistic career at the age of sixteen as a painter of porcelain, in which capacity he developed an unrivalled skill for highly finished and minutely detailed depictions of flowers. He later brought these talents to larger-scale easel pictures. The present work of 1808 is a prime example of his polished mature style.