Rosie Sanders' Roses E-Book

Rosie Sanders

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 59

Beschreibung

Award-winning and hugely popular artist Rosie Sanders showcases the beauty of the rose in her follow up to Rosie Sanders Flowers. Over 80 stunning paintings and sketches are shown for the first time. The artist writes a personal letter on each of her rose paintings (to be given unopened to the final recipient or buyer of the painting). Many of these personal letters sit alongside the paintings, as they explain the creative and emotional process she went through to create it. The book is a revealing insight into the artist's muse and the author's sketches and drawings are also included to show the full artistic process.The book is introduced by an extended essay on the resonance of the rose – all across the world – in our art, literature, poetry, folklore and gardens. The rose emblem is timeless and this book not only celebrates its beauty in art but tells the story of the rose as one of nature's most powerful motifs.

Leseprobe

ROSIE SANDERS’

ROSES

Introduction

Cultivated for thousands of years for their beauty, symbolism and medicinal qualities, roses are much more than just garden plants. They appear in mythology, literature, religion, art, ballet and popular song, as well as being the national flower of England, Bulgaria, Iran, the USA and many others. We look back through rose-tinted glasses and aspire to live la vie en rose. One of the attractions of the rose is that it has always been slightly mysterious, concealing a dual nature: the delicacy of the blooms versus the sharpness of the thorns, associations with courtly love versus sexuality and pagan symbolism versus Christian meaning. It is a flower that manages to be both pure and decadent. A duality William Shakespeare recognises in Sonnet 35:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults.

How the rose came to be

All roses have their origins in the northern hemisphere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle. Fossils up to twenty million years old have been found in northern Europe, North America, China and Japan, indicating that the rose probably evolved after Pangaea had split into northern Laurasia and southern Gondwanaland during the Mesozoic Era. In other words, many, many years ago. There are over a hundred species from Asia, thirty to forty from Europe and north-west Africa and twenty from America.

The scientific theories may place roses here but there are many other explanations for their creation. The Muslims believed that they were formed from the sweat of Mohammed, which is why John Gerard, in his Herball of 1597, wrote that the Turks could not bear to see the leaves of roses on the ground. Even now they will avoid stepping on fallen petals.

The authorship of the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville may be open to debate but his description of how roses came into being is charming, if unlikely. ‘Between this church and the city is the Field Floridus; it is called the “Field of Flowers” because a young maiden was falsely accused of fornication, for which cause she was to have been burnt in that place. She was led thither and bound to the stake and faggots of thorns and other wood were laid round her. When she saw the wood begin to burn about her, she prayed to our Lord she was not guilty of that crime He would help and save her, so that all men might know it. When she had thus prayed, she entered into the fire - and immediately it went out, and those branches that were alight became red rose-trees, and those that had not caught became white ones, full of blooms. And those were the first roses and rose-bushes that were ever seen.’

In Greek literature the poet Anacreon wrote that roses were formed from the foam that dripped from Aphrodite when she emerged from the sea. Another unlikely but equally delightful theory.

A little ancient history

In a Minoan house at Knossos on Crete there remains one of the earliest paintings of roses. The fresco depicts a simple five-petalled rose, similar to the wild roses that still grow on the island. Frescoes were often painted to create a permanent illusion of summer, or to make the gardens appear larger, and are therefore a good indicator of the plants that were actually grown at the time. Herodotus, in the 5th century BC, describes gardens ‘said to have belonged to Midas and where roses grow spontaneously, sixty blooms to every bush, and sweeter smelling than any other flowers’. A hundred years later Theophrastus, in his Historia Plantarum or Enquiry into Plants, describes a hundred-petalled rose which, like those in Midas’ garden, may be an ancestor of the damask rose. He also describes people in eastern Macedonia transplanting roses from Mount Pangaeus into their gardens, shifting the plant from wild to cultivated.

The popularity of roses during the Roman era can be seen in the many frescoes and wall paintings, especially those preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum. They were popular garden plants and The House of the Gold Bracelet shows a red and white rose at every stage from bud to flower. The flowers themselves heralded the arrival of warmer weather and were used in food and drink, perfumes and at every celebration from orgies to burials.

Demand was so high that they were grown commercially in Campania and the famous rose gardens at Paestum in Greece were described as rosetum meaning nursery rather than rosarium or rose garden. Greenhouses were built in an attempt to prolong the flowering season and it was here that the gardeners were credited with growing twice-flowering roses which were praised by Virgil and Ovid. The Greeks had introduced roses into Egypt and early-flowering roses were sent from there to Rome, where the season was also extended into winter with blooms from Spain and other parts of North Africa.

Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia or Natural History, described several different roses but it is hard to identify individual species. He incorrectly believed that their characteristics resulted from the soil in which they grew, with the best roses growing near Rome and Naples, the brightest red flowers on the west coast of Anatolia and the most scented in North Africa. What is probably more important is that his writings show the great interest the Romans took in roses.