Still Life with Delphiniums, Philippe Swyncop

A highly elegant floral composition, in which a generous bouquet blooms in a blue and white porcelain planter set upon its matching stand, in front of a window half-open onto a garden. The long blue stems of the delphiniums soar towards the top of the canvas, surrounded by tightly clustered white roses and broad green foliage rendered in bold, rich brushstrokes. The painting is particularly luminous: natural light streams through the window and caresses the petals, bringing to life the white of the roses and the deep blue of the delphiniums, whilst the blue and white porcelain of the vase and its stand captures and reflects this brightness. The palette, vivid and fresh, is rendered in broad impasto strokes typical of the painter’s style. The canvas is signed and dated ‘Ph. Swyncop 1922’ in the lower right-hand corner. The painting has been professionally cleaned and re-varnished. The frame has been restored and regilded using traditional methods, in keeping with historic gilding techniques, using gold leaf and tempera. It now provides the painting with a richly ornamented gilded setting, perfectly in keeping with the period of the work.
Dimensions: canvas H 100.5 × W 50 cm — with frame H 117.5 × W 77.5 cm
Early 20th-century Belgian school.
Biography: Philippe Swyncop, born in Brussels on 16 June 1878, was a Belgian painter, illustrator and poster artist active in the first half of the 20th century. The elder brother of the painter Charles Swyncop, whom he trained, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1892 to 1898 under Jean-François Portaels and Constant Montald. In 1900, he was awarded the Godecharle Prize. He then travelled to France, Italy and Spain – countries whose exoticism left a lasting impression on him – where he painted scenes of everyday life and traditional costumes with great passion. The creator of numerous portraits and still lifes, he was also a caricaturist and produced book illustrations, notably for Pierre Louÿs’s *La Femme et le Pantin* in 1936. His works are held in museum collections in Brussels and Ghent. He died in Saint-Gilles (Brussels) in 1949.

The dimensions are clearly visible on our virtual tour, where the work is prominently displayed. (https://mytwin.getaview.be/fr/tour/y2gabgpgp)