The tulips are done here, moved on and way by the early heat.

One of the things I love about tulips is this ephemerality, this Tulip Time.

But it is exactly this here-and-gone act that they play every year that has challenged artists to capture them. They are particularly good subjects for oil paintings and watercolors.

Here are a few I’ve run into over the past year.

The 17^th century saw the tulip as valuable as jewels. It is no wonder that Dutch master included them in the sumptuous still lives they painted for their wealthy clients. In this 1614 still life by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder the tulip rises triumphant above the roses, columbine and carnations it shares the bouquet with. Obviously they were not all blooming at the same time and this painting was built over time. But the exacting observation and execution in undeniably beautiful.

A decade later an unknown follower of Ambrosius Bosschaert painted this tulip in a more supine manner, like a nude, with the erotically exploring butterfly on its lip. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a butterfly on a tulip. It is usually too cold and rainy here for butterflies when the tulips are blooming, I’ve seen bumble bees tumbling in and out of the flowers though.

A hundred years later the Dutch masters were still including tulips in their still lives. In this 1722 painting by Jan van Huysum the tulip seems almost sinister against the black background, with its white petals seemingly blood tipped.

Few of the Impressionist turned their eyes to the tulip, was it already out of fashion? Displaced by sunflowers and water lilies? I know of only one painting by van Gogh of tulip fields and one by Monet that includes tulips. Recently I stumbled onto this bouquet of tulips by Cezanne, done in 1890. I am not a big fan of Cezanne, but these tulips at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena captivated me.

On that same trip to Southern California I saw the work of contemporary Vietnamese-American artist Thinh Nguyen. He painted, then cut and reassembled his canvases into all kinds of objects, even furniture. I’m not sure if he intended this piece to represent a tulip, but that is what I saw.

Not all artists who turn their eyes to tulips are masters; still the results can be quite lovely. Michael bought me this 1904 gouache painting by an unknown Norwegian artist for Christmas. Not only does it have a lovingly rendered tulip, but also carnations, my other favorite flower.

Here is a detail of the exquisite brushwork of this unknown artist.

Some artist are much more painterly.

And some need a template. I love the big blue shadows of the tulips in this paint-by-number from the 1950s.

And others only need a crayon.

This was hanging in the Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Washington. Nothing charms me more than a child’s simple rendering of a tulip.

Sweet!

It is undeniable that the hybrid tulip is a work of art. They are relatively new to the world of horticulture,though,  only arriving in Europe around 1554. It was the merchants and travellers of the Silk Road, along which many species of wild tulips grow, who brought them to the West, in particular Istanbul, as early as the 12^th century.

My love of tulips certainly sprung from a love of the cultivated garden variety, yet my admiration of and frustration with species tulips is what persists. Still I can’t help but plant hybrids every year. Anna Pavrod calls the wild tulips “willfully variable” and notes that “ establishing clear links and breeding lines is a problem” with all the hybrids we see today.

Certainly at this point the hybrids are being hybridized with the hybrids. And what is genetic chaos has created a kaleidoscope of beauties for the spring garden in temperate climes.

Here are a few of my favorites, at least this year:

There is nothing like the rich colors achieved by hybridizers .‘Jan Reus’, remains one of my all time favorites for that incredible and indescribable color.

Equally saturated of color is the lustily black-purple ‘Havran’.

By now everyone knows of my pension for red and white tulips.

I grew ‘Leen van der Mark’ for the first time this year. It looks like a artfully flayed radish, but what I found really beautiful about this tulip was how it aged, the white turning soft pink and the red turning a lovely merlot. And it held up for a long time in our abnormally hot spring.

This single ‘Burning Heart’ has been reblooming in my garden for years now, its elegance not marred in the least by the weedy bed it inhabits. A true classic, and my absolute favorite.

Then there is “Grand Perfection”. Need I say more?

If red-and-white isn’t your thing, there is always purple-and-white like ‘Rembrandt’s Favorite’. These “broken” tulips are really what started the whole 16^th century tulips craze and the subsequent obsessive hybridization of tulips.

Sometimes it seems the hybridizers have gone mad. ‘Miami Sunset’–a tulip would never live in Miami–has all the audacity of a tropical flower. What colors!!

Still there are many lovely tulips that remain close to their wild ancestors.‘Analita’ is part of the Fosteriana Group of tulips, small, early and beautiful.

‘Taco’ looks to me like a Tulipa clusiana hybrid but it is thrown in the Miscellaneous Group, a testament to the genetic confusion that tulips have become.

Even with all extraordinary beauty —did I use the words “beauty” and “lovely” enough in this post — of the hybrid tulips, it is the simple charms of the true species which keep me enthralled. Tulipa linifolia has returned reliably for me. I grow it in a pot with the yellow leaved hosta ‘ On Stage’.