Large Bearded Iris Oil Painting on Turquoise, Monogrammed, Limed Rococo Frame, c. 1990–2010

The Piece

A large oil painting of bearded irises against a bright turquoise ground, monogrammed at the lower right and set in a limed wood frame with rococo corners.

Six blooms fill the picture, and no two are the same colour. A coral-red iris opens at the top with its falls curling down, a salmon-pink one sits just below it still half-furled, and to the right a pale blush-white iris and a green-tinged cream one hang together with their ruffled edges drawn in quick feathered strokes. A violet iris leans in from the upper right corner, cut off by the frame, and a slate-blue bloom sits low at the bottom. Buds, curling spent stems and long blade leaves thread between them.

The paint is handled with real confidence. The petals are built up thickly, worked wet into wet so the pinks and whites blend inside a single stroke, and the ruffles are dragged out with the side of the brush so they look soft at the edge. The turquoise ground is laid in with broad crossing strokes that leave a visible texture across the whole surface, and it runs deeper blue toward the lower right corner where the monogram sits.

The frame is as much a part of it as the painting. The limed wood shows a warm pink-brown grain through a white wash, with a beaded inner lip, a twisted rope moulding, and scrolling rococo ornament at every corner and centred along each side, finished in a soft washed silver.

History & Provenance

The painting carries a monogram rather than a full signature, a T followed by a small mark, and no artist is claimed beyond it.

The subject has a long pedigree. The bearded iris has been a painter's flower since Van Gogh made it famous, but the colours here tell a more recent story. Pink, coral and blush-white bearded irises are an achievement of American hybridisers in the twentieth century, and they only became ordinary garden plants after the Second World War. Painting them in this full range, from coral through blush to slate, is painting a modern garden rather than an old-master one.

The frame dates the piece. Limed wood with the grain showing through a white wash, beaded and rope-twist mouldings, and cast rococo corner ornament in a washed silver finish is the French country framing that ran through American decorating from the 1990s into the 2000s, and the painting sits in it as it was meant to be shown.

It is offered as c. 1990 to 2010.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a painting that does the work of a whole wall. The turquoise ground is loud enough to hold its own across a room, and the irises are big, loose and generous rather than fussy, so it reads from the doorway and still rewards a close look at the brushwork.

The colours are the reason it is easy to live with. Coral, blush, violet and turquoise sit well with cream walls, white linen, rattan and painted furniture, and the limed frame softens everything around it. Hang it over a bed, a sofa or a dresser in a room that gets good light, and keep it out of direct afternoon sun.