Marigolds (section)

A dense wall of marigolds fills nearly every inch of this canvas, their orange and yellow heads pressing forward against a tangle of deep green leaves. Painted around 1910 by the Austrian artist Koloman Moser, "Marigolds" leaves almost no room for sky or background, just an endless swirl of blooms. The brushwork is thick and quick, giving the flowers a sense of movement, as though the whole garden bed is alive and stretching upward in the summer heat.

Moser is a curious figure to find behind a flower painting, since he made his name as a designer rather than a painter. Over his career he turned his hand to furniture, jewelry, postage stamps, and stained glass, and he was one of the founders of the Vienna Secession, the group of artists who broke away from tradition to try something new. His feel for pattern and strong color, sharpened by all those years of design work, comes through clearly in the way these blossoms repeat and glow across the canvas. He came to serious painting only later in life, and there is nothing complicated to puzzle over here, only the plain joy of a garden in full bloom.