Yellow and White Lilies c. 1780

Curator: This watercolour piece, simply titled "Yellow and White Lilies," comes to us from Willem van Leen, created around 1780. A fairly straightforward subject, one might think. Editor: Not so straightforward for me! My first thought? It’s got a surprising amount of *drama* for a botanical study. I mean, lilies – typically so serene – but there’s a tension here. Curator: You feel tension? I see something of the Enlightenment’s embrace of empirical observation; the desire to classify and understand the natural world through detailed representation. There was a vogue for botanical illustration among certain social strata. Editor: Oh, I’m sure! But look how van Leen captures the light, those nearly translucent petals. They are practically luminous, not just informative, y'know? The slight asymmetry of the composition gives them this, I don't know... they're reaching, stretching, craving the sun. Curator: It's interesting that you mention reaching; I was about to comment on how botanical paintings like this became powerful tools in colonialism. These images transmitted and possessed knowledge, as European empires classified and appropriated resources from colonized lands. Editor: Alright, now you’re going dark on me and those delicate freckles of the yellow lilies. Still, the artist’s captured something about how life pushes, always a little desperate, don’t you think? Curator: It speaks to how these paintings became important vehicles for scientific communication as European empires documented and controlled foreign botany. But looking at how van Leen presented them may also have satisfied an aesthetic yearning back home. It’s fascinating how science and social performance intertwined here. Editor: All the while, these lovely lilies remind me that, even in a time of conquest and catalogs, artists see what they see, filter everything through feeling, and manage to give something back. Curator: Indeed, from scientific document to symbol of a certain aspirational domesticity... or maybe something that still blooms today.