The artist’s ability to distinguish and paint the different kinds of flower is the result of a passion for botany developed in his childhood, when he collected plants and dried them for study.  

Auctioned four times, Vaso di fiori con ritrattino (Vase of Flowers with Small Portrait) arrived in the Cerruti Collection after 1993 by way of the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice, the Jesi Collection in Milan and the Galleria Galatea in Turin. Like many other works by Filippo de Pisis on the same subject, it is a colourful composition of green, white, pink and red in which every detail, painted in dashes or strokes, is justified scientifically. The artist’s ability to distinguish and paint the different kinds of flower is the result of a passion for botany developed in his childhood, when he collected plants and dried them for study. After his move to Paris in 1925, the combination of this interest and first-hand acquaintance with the work of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Eugène Delacroix led him to focus more on floral compositions of an increasingly stark and frenzied nature where the flowers, as in this case, appear like chromatic tangles. Floral motifs are also sketched out on the krater-like vase of porcelain and gold, perhaps one of the items collected by de Pisis at number 30 Rue Bonaparte, crammed like all his studios with antiques, oriental carpets and objects, theatrical costumes and period furniture as well as canvases, cardboard and stretchers in every corner. Looking forward to the numerous works of the 1930s in which paintings hanging on the wall and stretchers leaning against it form a background to the vase of flowers, picked out in a few quick strokes of colour, this canvas presents a setting enriched by a painting on an indistinguishable subject that probably hung in the studio where it was produced. 

Beside the vase, as in other works of 1928, is a small painting, possibly the portrait of one of the young men who frequented the artist’s studio. De Pisis was in fact fascinated by the various human specimens discovered in the Metro and on the banks of the Seine, from male prostitutes and tramps to workers and old people, and often asked them to pose for him. The resulting small portraits and numerous nudes, sometimes dashed off on whatever support came to hand, were always linked with vivid memories. In this case, however, though barely sketched, the features and clothing of the subject, shown in a large overcoat, appear to be female. It may therefore be a portrait of a woman, perhaps even the bouquiniste or seller of used books mentioned in the inscription on the back (“Cartone regalatomi da una bouquiniste madre di un bel bimbo biondo. Si vouz m’avez bien prenezle!” [Cardboard that was given to me by a bouquiniste, mother of a beautiful blond child. If you care about me, take it!]). One last hypothesis is that the small portrait to the right of the vase may not be a painting at all but a photo given to the painter on 10 March by a Czechoslovakian model showing himself dressed as a woman.¹ 

The date written by de Pisis on the back of the painting is 22 March 1928. Spring had just begun and he felt the urgent need to paint flowers. The entry in his memoirs for just three days earlier mentions wandering through the streets and includes long descriptions of primroses, violets, myosotis, carnations and sunflowers, as well as expressing his longing for a balcony.²

Giulia Toso

¹ Zanotto 1996, p. 240.

² De Pisis 1989, pp. 132-133.