Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today
25 April – 6 September 2026
Kettle’s Yard is delighted to present ‘Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today’, a major exhibition celebrating the vitality and resonance of flower paintings over the past 125 years. Running from 25 April – 6 September 2026, the exhibition will reflect artists’ enduring interest in one of art history’s most cherished genres, featuring works by 46 artists including Henri Rousseau, David Bomberg, Tirzah Garwood, Louise Bourgeois, Chris Ofili, Doron Langberg and Jennifer Packer.
When Jim and Helen Ede opened Kettle’s Yard to visitors in 1957, the modest but beautiful arrangements of fresh cut flowers were key to one’s experience of visiting the house. Flowers created visual correspondences with surrounding artworks, notably Winifred Nicholson’s Cyclamen and Primula (c. 1923) and Christopher Wood’s Flowers (1930), which remain on permanent display. Inspired by these two much-loved works, the exhibition will reveal the myriad ways in which paintings of flowers can suggest personal and symbolic meaning and reflect sociohistorical changes, as well as being both stylistically innovative and compelling.
‘Handpicked’ will exhibit works from 1900 to the 1960s in the first gallery space, and from the 1970s onwards in the second, finishing with works that exemplify the diversity of painting today. It will open with Henri Rousseau’s colourful Bouquet of Flowers (1909-10), created towards the end of the artist’s life and revered by Picasso and the Surrealists for its unconventional style and dreamlike vision.
Like Rousseau, other 20th-century artists depicted flowers in their own distinct ways, sometimes using the subject as an opportunity to experiment, as seen in Vanessa Bell’s Cubist-inspired Still life of Dahlias, Chrysanthemums and Begonias (1912), and Anne Redpath’s response to Abstract Expressionism in White Cyclamen (1962). This part of the exhibition will also explore works inspired by botanical art, as in Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic Fritillaria (1915) or Rory McEwen’s luminous painting, Tulip ‘Helen Josephine’ (1975).
In the second gallery, works made in more recent decades will reveal an exhilarating variety of approaches to paintings in which flowers are the central subject, from Euan Uglow’s depiction of a single stem in Narcissus on Yellow Background (1978) to Jai Chuhan’s Flowers (2008) painted from life in a single session. Here, paintings by Caroline Walker, Andrew Cranston and Aubrey Levinthal will evoke particular places and our emotional relationships with flowers, capturing both blazing and subtle colours and embodying the temporality of life. A number of artists will also create new works for this part of the exhibition, including Cassi Namoda, Kaye Donachie and Lubaina Himid.
‘Handpicked’ is curated by Kettle’s Yard Director Andrew Nairne with Assistant Curator Naomi Polonsky, and in discussion with members of the Kettle’s Yard community panel. It will be accompanied by an illustrated publication with an essay by Olivia Meehan, the author of Slow Looking: The Art of Nature (Thames & Hudson, 2025), as well as a lively public programme of audio tours, talks and workshops for all ages.
The full list of contributing artists includes: Hurvin Anderson, Vanessa Bell, David Bomberg, Louise Bourgeois, Andrew Cranston, Gigi Ettedgui, Anna Freeman Bentley, Marjory Garnett, Tirzah Garwood, Gluck, Lubaina Himid, Howard Hodgkin, Isak of Igdlorpait, Poppy Jones, Nerys Johnson, David Jones, Joy Labinjo, Doron Langberg, Aubrey Levinthal, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rory McEwen, Cedric Morris, Cassi Namoda, Mary Newcomb, Winifred Nicholson, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Celia Paul, Bryan Pearce, Emma Prempeh, Bianca Rafaella, Eric Ravilious, Anne Redpath, Henri Rousseau, William Scott, Judith Tucker, Euan Uglow, Charlotte Verity, Caroline Walker, Alison Watt, Christopher Wood and Clare Woods.