From Flowers to Plants: Plant-Thinking in Nineteenth-Century Danish Flower Painting

In the nineteenth century, flower painters in Denmark shifted from depicting arranged, cut flowers to showing plants within their ecosystems. This article explores this shift by examining four paintings by the artists Christine Løvmand and Anthonore Christensen. According to Michael Marder and Emanuele Coccia, important philosophers in critical plant studies, plants have been overlooked as world creators. Coccia highlights the nineteenth century as a particularly low point, in this regard, but seeks exceptions and points to significant nineteenth-century articulations of how plants move in, sense, and create their environment. An investigation of Danish art and botany reveals similar articulations, as several significant artists made growing rather than cut plants the theme of some of their paintings and botanists explored the wild flora and the agency of plants. This nineteenth-century shift in focus from flowers to plants disseminates notions of plants that can inspire and help us reorient our relationship with the natural world.