"Certainly I hope to sell in the course of time " - Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
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Bouquet of Flowers against the Italian Riviera landscape of Lingueglietta

Over a number of years Matthew Moss painted a series of landscapes of three sister villages in the eastern part of the Italian Riviera, Costarainera, Cipressa and Lingueglietta. These scenes were usually shown from below looking upwards and putting into relief the terraced hillsides that end usually in a fortified village dominated by the churchtower. 'Bouquet of Flowers against the Italian Riviera landscape of Lingueglietta' represents one of those paintings. After the landscape had been completed the artist modified it, quite a number of years later. The artist did this to a number of his Ligurian landscapes. The changes Matthew made were, usually, placing a vase or a bouquet of flowers in the centre of the composition and allowing the original landscape to emerge from around the edges or peering through the flower composition. The massive corsage that dominates the foreground is a mix of varying tones of red blue and violet and, acting as a foil to the colours of the floral composition, silvery-white foliage. This classical flower arrangement brings to mind the flowerpieces that Jan Brueghel de Velours (Peter Paul Rubens' friend and collaborator) painted for Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan. The village of Lingueglietta, partly hidden, is the landscape that appears in the background of this painting.

It was not unusual for artists of previous generations to change arbitrarily paintings they had painted at an earlier period. With the free market in paintings that developed during the golden age of Flemish and Dutch paintings in the 1600s, where the artist had more control over the end use of his work of art this often occurred. The most notorious example of this right to change casually the style of a work of art is Peter Paul Rubens in the 'Le Chapeau de Paille' and 'Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning' begun as a small panel painting. As Rubens worked he added new pieces of timber until it ended up as a painting 131 x 229 cm. consisting of seventeen pieces of oak timber glued together.

Flowers and Trees are available for book illustrations, annual reports, paper and packaging, giftware, related products. You can license them in the following format: Original transparencies in 6 x 6 cm. (2¼ in.) format, high-resolution RGB drum scans on DVD or efficient and quick E-Mail or FTP upload.