As part of the National Gallery’s celebration of Dutch flower paintings from the early 17th century to the late 18th century, The Flower Council of Holland created a giant ‘living’ painting, made up of 26,500 real flowers, to stand outside the famous London landmark on Trafalgar Square.
Entitled A Still Life of Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase, it pays homage to Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder’s floral masterpiece – a still life painting of a beautiful vase of flowers. It took almost 30 florists working for two days straight, using 100 blocks of florist foam, nearly 30,000 stems of 26 different flower varieties in 37 different colors to recreate Bosschaert’s work.
The Flower Council had to appoint PressOn – a Kent-based digital printer – to create a huge print to act as a guide to install the flowers, which included six tulip varieties, four varieties of peonies, three varieties of carnations, six varieties of freesias, six varieties of calla lily, and five varieties of roses.
The large structure had a built-in water irrigation system to keep the blooms fresh, and over the course of five days, the flowers were replenished twice bringing the total number to 52,950. Beautiful. Make sure you watch the video below to see the living painting come together.
[via creative boom]