Word: cereus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Thornton, whose botany was not so sharp as his sense of the picturesque, insisted that his artists give each flower a romantically appropriate setting: Dutch meadows for the tulips, mountain heights for the kalmia, a forbidding coast for the American cowslip, a gothic midnight for the night-blowing cereus. If the results have more period charm than truth-to-nature, it is partly because flowers are among the most difficult challenges a painter can pick. Flowers are delicate as eyelids, complex as blood vessels, vital as fire, and their colors make paint look muddy by comparison. Yet artists-an ambitious...