6/5/26
Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
25 April – 6 September 2026
Fresh-cut flowers have always played an important part in the history of Kettle’s Yard house: Jim and Helen Ede, who lived there and amassed the gallery’s fantastic modernist art collection, rarely left a room without a small bouquet or posy. Today, this tradition is carried on by a volunteer team. In fact, the pleasure brought by the presence of flowers is such that even shelves introduced for hand gel during the Covid pandemic have now been repurposed as extra placements for vases. The current exhibition, Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today, does what it says on the tin; through a display of paintings by 46 artists, eight of whom have made new works especially, it showcases flower painting from the last 125 years and was inspired by the omnipresent cut flowers as much as by significant works in the collection, including Christopher Wood’s Flowers (1930) and Winifred Nicholson’s Cyclamen and Primula (c1923) (neither of which are included, but can be seen in the house).
While this might all sound simple, as Andrew Nairne, the director of Kettle’s Yard, pointed out in his introductory speech: “It’s not just about flowers!” Indeed, a rose is never just a rose – there are always associated emotions or memories or stories. These, too, are brought out in the two-room exhibition, just as they are, too, in the accompanying catalogue, which will have a life beyond the show as an anthology of paintings and flowers.
Read my full review here