Fresh From the Greenhouse: Great Flowers and Great Detail
Sometimes I come across paintings that seem to be made with a different brush. Jessica Hayllar must have had an eye for detail.
Jessica Hayllar is an artist I just encountered and—I must confess—initially knew nothing about. The image below, however, made me stop.
The painting is called Fresh From the Greenhouse and was painted in 1885. It is a curious image, the painting shows a room within a quite large house, it seems. The room contains a chair and an unconventional large flower. I had to look twice at the paintings because, in my mind, there should be a table beneath the plant, but instead the plant fills all the space that (in my mind, instinctively) should be divided between the plant and a table. It seems odd to just place this huge flower in the middle of the floor, where people must be passing through all the time. The title, however, might suggest that the plant indeed is just off of the greenhouse, perhaps put down temporarily in order to decide on a more permanent placement.
If we look closer and further into the house, we see a couple of women, conversing, it seems. They are placed by the window, relaxed. One is seated, the other standing. One is wearing an apron, the other one is more exclusively dressed, indicating that the lady of the house is talking to the maid. I suspect it is the placement of the plant they are discussing.
What struck me the most, however, is the amount of detail in the painting! It really stuns me how meticulously the artist has rendered the objects; the magazine on the chair is just one of the things that is incredibly well represented. And look at the tiles on the floor—how the light from the window further in is affecting the color and shine! It amazes me how Hayllar has managed to blend her colors to such a degree; it is almost photographic!
The Artist
So, who was this artist? Jessica Hayllar was born in London on 16 September 1858, as the eldest of nine children. Her father, James Hayllar (1829-1920), was himself a well-regarded painter and gave painting lessons to Jessica, along with her sisters Edith, Mary, and Kate, who were also talented artists. Jessica was the most prolific of the children and exhibited at the Royal Academy in London regularly between 1879 and 1915.
Hayllar mostly painted domestic scenes, local villagers and depicted family occasions, and a focus on windows and doorways. We can see this preference, I think, in the painting above.
An accident with a cartage in 1900 affected her health badly, and her artistic output decreased from that time. In her final years she mostly concentrated on painting flower pieces.
Hayllar never married, but lived with her parents as long as the lived. When her father died in 1920, she moved to her sister Edith Hayllar MacKay in Surrey. Jessica Hayllar died in 1940, in her 82nd year.