Feature: Dutch flowers bloom in Britain's National Gallery spring show

A combination of fascination with botany and the initial flowerings of the world's first capitalist society inspired Dutch artists to create their own genre of painting 300 years ago.

The genre was Dutch flower painting, and it became almost as popular and expensive as the flowers portrayed in the exquisite oil paintings, a new show at the British National Gallery revealed.

Betsy Wieseman, curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings at the gallery, told Xinhua: "At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, there was a great burst in interest in botany and horticulture in the Netherlands with exotic bulbs and cultivars being imported from the Middle East, the Far East and the Americas and starting to be grown and developed in the country."

The flower bulbs were brought back to the Netherlands by merchants in the young country's burgeoning trading system, which was extending feelers across the globe, where they changed hands for huge prices and led to the cultivation of flowers, for which the Netherlands is still famous today.

In addition to the flowers, the paintings also record another prized item in the Dutch society of the time. "One of the most coveted artifacts brought back to the Netherlands were porcelain items from China. They were absolutely prized as collectors' objects," said Wieseman.

Several of the paintings include such Chinese porcelain bowls to hold the flowers, a sign of the wealth of the patrons who commissioned or bought the paintings.

The rarity of the bulbs and cultivars sparked high prices and then rampant speculation, with the country becoming gripped by Tulipmania. This eventually burst in a market bubble, bankrupting some, but the desire for the expensive flowers remained.

But not everyone could afford the flowers. Wieseman explained: "In order to record those flowers, preserve them and make them available to people, that was one of the inspirations for the development of flower paintings."

The exhibition tracks the development of the genre over the 200 years from the beginning of the 17th century onwards, with the "grandfather" of the style Jan Brueghel the Elder leading the way.

His paintings were about the display of the flowers, and focused on the details of the flowers rather than attempting to put them in any kind of natural or realistic environment, said Wieseman.

Fashions changed, and by the middle of the 18th century, a more colorful palette was being used by painters like Jan van Huysum, who also focused on a more natural setting and a consciously more posed and beautiful arrangement for the flowers.

The exhibition runs at the National Gallery in central London until Aug. 29. Enditem