Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same control of combination, but you have not the same control of time. Flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well.

People seem to think that any one can paint flowers. On the contrary, almost no one can paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted. Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in substance and sentiment.

When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got the quality.

What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals. Yet you cannot paint the petals either, else you lose the flower. You must paint the quality of the petal, and the character of the flower.

All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it back to its original form again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What will you do?

Mass and Value.—There is something besides the flower and the petal; there is the mass. The mass is one thing, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. You must make this visible. The difference in value in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me once. Yet the difference is there. The bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious expression of it.

When you begin a group of flowers, get the whole first. Make up your mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. Do not paint the little things, the personal things first then. Paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the forms of the accents, and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their values. For you will have to change these, and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong.

Get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change, substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general relation. As you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from general to particular. Finally, from new flowers, put in those more individual touches which give the personal flowers.

This is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. But it should not discourage you. Nothing takes the place of the flower picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint flowers.

General Principles Hold Always.—Still, the principles of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in general will have its application to flowers.

Paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth painting, even if there be difficulties.

Details Again.—Don't make too much of unimportant things. The whole is more than the part; the flower than the petal. Of course you can't paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the petals so that you can't see anything else. If the character of the flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of any special petal, suggest the petals only. If the petal is important to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or do not paint it at all.

Colors.—Colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than less subtle than you think them. If you have a doubt, make it more delicate—give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers are never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of strength. Black will be the most useless color of your palette. Make your grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by refinement of color.

Sketches.—Make sketches of flowers constantly. Try to carry the painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an hour. Practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your picture.

Get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work better in more difficult combinations.

When you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. It will be a more patient sitter than they. Apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to the sketching of flowers. Either rub in quickly a frottÉe and then paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately to render the characteristic qualities. When you sketch flowers don't take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you can complete in that time.

When you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. Then put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the flower. Make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. In the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent.