CELEBRATING SPRING

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CELEBRATING SPRING

A selection of spring-inspired objects from our collection and on show

6-minute read

Header image: detail from Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Vision Early Spring tapestry © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd. Courtesy the artist

We’re sharing some of our favourite blossoms, blooms and spring scenes from the collection and on display in the Museum as we celebrate the joys of spring.

This bountiful season has inspired artists from all corners of the world for many, many centuries. Delve into the stories behind these bright and beautiful works.

Spring landscape by Qian Songyan

This impressionistic landscape from the Jiangsu province in China is a sheer explosion of pink spring blossom, by the celebrated Chinese artist and calligrapher Qian Songyan. Ink and colour on paper.
1960

Fan with praying mantis, bee, and prunus blossom

A delicately painted fan by Chinese artist Chen Fen, who specialised in bird and flower painting from Guangzhou. His fine-brush style is really evident here.
1881

Festival of Cherry Blossoms by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

This colourful depiction of a beautiful woman and her maid beneath a cherry tree links a romantic kabuki play about a young couple from enemy families and a chapter of the famous novel the Tale of Genji. Both are set in springtime.
1845-6

Tsuba with heraldic cherry blossoms

Falling cherry blossoms symbolised the often short lives of Japanese samurai. This tsuba, or handguard for a samurai's sword, is intricately inlaid with silver, gold and the dark grey alloy shakudō on a copper ground.
1st half of the 18th century

Pair of swallows and cherry blossom

This painting by Jin Yuan is from an album of studies of birds and flowers. Jin was much admired for his bird paintings. The coming of swallows in spring was welcomed and signified good luck for the household and symbolises new beginnings. Birds in Chinese mythology and legend are numerous.
1857

Kyo-Satsuma vase with ducks and cherry blossom

An elegant Satsuma vase in double-gourd shape, decorated in overglaze enamels with a design of mandarin ducks under cherry blossom. It was made in Kyoto for the export trade.
1871-1900

Peach Blossom Stream in Spring

An atmospheric landscape painting by Chinese artist and calligrapher Weng Tonghe. The beautiful scenery of Mount Yu (Jiangsu province of China), where Weng retired to in 1898, inspired his album of landscapes of the area, including this scene. Weng carefully modulated his brushstroke and used the calligraphic effects of dry and wet ink to render landscapes in the styles of earlier masters such as Wang Hui.
1902

A Jungle Crow on a flowering cherry branch (detail)

A striking colour woodcut print by the Japanese designer Ohara Koson. Crows, traditionally thought to be messengers between the human and spirit worlds, are a common motif in Japanese art. Ohara Koson produced over 30 different crow prints.
1916

Suzuribako, or writing box, with cherry trees on a river bank

This lacquer writing box (suzuribako) is part of a writing set made by the Kyoto artist Tomita Kōshichi. The writing box is decorated with a spring scene (while a larger document box in the set features an autumn scene). The boxes use a wide variety of lacquer techniques to achieve a range of textures.
c. 1890-1900

Cherry blossoms by Okada Gyokuzan

The Osaka painter Gyokuzan has created a simple but charming depiction of a cherry tree in spring time through the effective use of pigment: a mixture of pink and white for the blossoms, and ink and gold for the bark. The painting is part of an album of calligraphy and painting by various artists.
1799-1805

The curious legend of the 'vegetable lamb', also known as 'Scythian lamb' or 'Borometz', first appeared in European medieval texts and travelogues. An animal-plant hybrid, it was believed to be attached to the earth through a short stalk from which it bent and grazed the grass around it.

Its myth was likely inspired by a type of Asian fern with distinctive woolly stems, which was widely used as a medicinal herb.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1699–1758) featured the lamb in her second volume of ‘A Curious Herbal’. In the early 18th century, plants were an essential resource for healthcare, and Elizabeth was one of the first British women to make such a major achievement in the fields of medical botany and botanical illustration.

Her herbal showcased both indigenous medical plants and exotic plants from East Asia and South America. It was published in weekly instalments between 1737–1739, as a passion project and to help her pay off her husband’s debt and secure his release from debtor's prison.

Elizabeth lived near the Apothecaries’ Garden, now known as the Chelsea Physic Garden, and worked closely with Isaac Rand, the curator of the garden. In addition to drawing each of the plants from live specimens each week, Elizabeth also hand-coloured the engraved plates for those subscribers willing to pay an extra shilling.

Blackwell’s print of the ‘Scythian lamb’ is on display as one of the botanical books in our current In Bloom exhibition.

Image by permission of the Principal, Fellows and Scholars of Hartford College, Oxford, URC.4.5/2

On display in the In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World exhibition

By James Brown, 1912–1943

These beautiful watercolour daffodils are by English artist, James Brown. The artist has also used crayon and graphite in the painting.

Born in London in 1863, Brown was a musician who began painting seriously later in life. In 1912 he was introduced to Lucien Pissarro and the two developed a close friendship, often going painting together. This friendship contributed to his enthusiasm for painting and keenness to understand the principles of Impressionism.

Other than a couple of early attempts, James Brown never showed his work in public. Many of his paintings are signed with the pseudonym P. Conway, which he used for many years before returning to his own name.

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View by appointment in the Western Art Print Room

This spring scene was painted by Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Inchbold (1830–1888). It is thought to have been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1855, and inspired by William Wordsworth's poem, ‘The Excursion’.

John William Inchbold was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the son of a Yorkshire newspaper owner, Thomas Inchbold. Having shown a talent for drawing as a young man, he moved to London and became a student of the Royal Academy in 1847. This spring painting by him shows the Ruskin-inspired attention to detail and nature celebrated by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The primrose and harebells in the foreground and the ewe and two lambs on the ridge, herald the arrival of spring, though the trees are still bare, their branches picked out in sharp detail against the blue sky.

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On display in the Pre-Raphaelites Gallery 66, third floor

The Japanese tradition of viewing the cherry blossoms in spring is so popular that it has its own name – hanami, or flower viewing.

From the end of March, cherry trees blossom all across Japan and many people plan to visit their favourite hanami sites at 'just' the right moment. In fact, there is even a cherry blossom forecast announced by the Japanese Weather Bureau each year.

The practice is centuries old, and was once limited to the elite of Japanese society. Today people gather in great numbers, hosting picnics and parties under the cherry trees to celebrate the start of spring.

In this colourful Hiroshige woodblock print, stylishly dressed courtesans admire the cherry blossoms in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters, where each spring cherry trees were brought in big tubs. From Hiroshige's illustrations for 'Famous Places in the Eastern Capital' series.

EAX.4707

Not on display

A splendid example of Pre-Raphaelite oil painting, this large artwork by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865. The figure was painted in the garden of the poet and novelist, George Meredith. She represents Proserpina returning from the land of the dead. Sandys joined Rossetti's circle in 1857 and lived with him in Cheyne Walk for most of 1866.
See the Gentle Spring painting and Proserpina's story come to life in our animation >

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On display in the Pre-Raphaelites Gallery 66, third floor

This large and vibrant tapestry showing an early spring floralscape is by the contemporary artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. The woven work is one of two by the artist currently on show in the Ashmolean's In Bloom exhibition.

Ginsberg is a British multidisciplinary artist who uses the lens of technology to examine how we see and value nature. In 2021, she created Pollinator Pathmaker, a one-of-a-kind interspecies artwork which transforms how we see gardens and who we make them for. Her specially-designed algorithmic tool – pollinator.art – creates unique planting designs optimised for pollinator diversity.

Both these tapestries depict an unrealised Pollinator Pathmaker edition that would need to be planted to exist. They give viewers the chance to experience gardens in different seasons from the perspectives of pollinators, as if flying through their dense patches of grasses and flowers.

Using her unique ‘pollinator vision’ filter, Ginsberg further simulates the experience of another species by skewing our ‘human’ perspective with a psychedelic colour palette. The floral imagery is scarred with computational distortions that remind us of the otherworldliness of these unreal spaces. While the very fabric of tapestry’s pixelated weaving offers a sustainable medium to explore digital art.

Since 2022, Ginsberg has planted three large-scale outdoor living artwork editions at Eden Project Cornwall, Serpentine, London, and the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

Image: Pollinator Pathmaker: a4WNehdyCgdiKwVhXKGDBM (Pollinator Vision, Early Spring), Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, 2025, tapestry; woven, mixed fibre © Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Ltd. Courtesy the artist

On display in the In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World exhibition