Here’s a really interesting painting that I encountered Sunday while I was visiting the Getty Museum. It’s “The Tulip Folly,” by the 19th century French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, who was having a big show in one of the galleries. (The painting was on loan from Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum.)
The scene takes place during the 1630s tulip mania and shows a soldier guarding a potted tulip, while other troops stomp out fields of flowering bulbs. The piece was painted in 1882 during a time of economic distress around the Paris Bourse Crash, a time even more economically unsettled than our own. Gérôme was painting tulips and the tulip folly alright, but he was also commenting on his own day, which saw a great stock market crash three and a half centuries after the collapse of tulip values.
While looking for images of this painting I ran across a couple other interesting depictions of the tulip mania. Both were painted by Dutch artists closer to the actual tulip market crash, and both paintings reside in Haarlem’s Frans Hals Museum.
Hendrik Gerritsz Pot painted an allegory of Flora’s Wagon of Fools around 1640. This painting shows a cartload of tulip-deranged wackos leading the common workers into the sea. Substitute Wall Street bankers for the tulip-snorting loonies and I think it has special resonance for us today.
Jean Brueghel the Younger’s Satire of the Tulip Frenzy is even unkinder towards the participants in the frenzy. They appear in the painting as monkeys. Smack!
As unflattering as the speculators appear, in some ways the previous image of Flora’s wagon comes off as being a stronger indictment of the damage done to a general population by a moneyed elite. Still, Brueghel’s monkeys are pretty wild and I like his work better as a painting.
Sometimes I feel a little silly chasing after an unusual plant that I absolutely must have. (If you hear of a land run on San Diego ragweed, I might have something to do with it…) Maybe these images, combined with the experience of our current economic times, will slap a little bit of sanity into me.
I doubt you’ve ever been tempted to pay the kind of prices that led to the tulip market collapse. And then next time you feel guilty about your hobby, just repeat this plant mantra over and over to yourself “at least they’re not beanie babies.”
Fascinating, James. I agree with Susan. While my usual reaction to the collecting impulse (beanie babies, salt shakers, snow globes, or whatever) is that I don’t “get it,” at least plants are living beings that grow, change and reproduce — and those broken tulips of the tulip mania really were beautiful.
Eye-opening post, James…and you summarized with exactly the thoughts I had while reading it. But sanity in a plant nerd? Nah.
It was an insane time and brought many a household to ruination… not so terribly unlike our speculators market these days. Only this was a real commodity and a beautiful one at that. Of course only for the rich, whereas today many middle class folks lost their life savings. Very interesting post James. I love seeing these old paintings. ;>)
Susan, one mantra in the gallery world is “buy what you love,” meaning you shouldn’t necessarily expect any sort of appreciation on a purchase. I couldn’t imagine ever loving beanies.
Jean, I agree with you on the objects of the frenzy being pretty exceptional plants. The fact that they were infected with a virus that caused the special color forms somehow seems like an appropriate metaphor that all the objects of collecting are somehow tainted.
Ricki, I actually do get a moment of sanity every now and then, though it tends to strike AFTER I’ve come home with a couple more plants than I have room for.
Carol, I’m glad you enjoyed the paintings. I love how depictions of the past are often snapshots of the present as well. I was reading that researchers weren’t quite sure how bad the tulip mania really was, but looking at the contemporary Dutch paintings, it’s pretty clear the phenomenon was real and significant.
That’s wild. I knew about the tulip mania but never thought of artists depicting it all. Makes sense since artists were such a big part of culture back then and the Dutch artists some of the most famous. Very neat. I’d love to see these in person. So glad you showcased them. Yes, sometimes putting plant lust into perspective makes our desires seem a bit insignificant. But still desire looms for those special plants.
I knew about the tulip mania as an economic story. I didn’t know it had been painted. Very cool.