George Cochran Lambdin’s first exposure to flower still life painting came while living in New York City when he took up residence in the Tenth Street Studio Building and became acquainted with John La Farge, the renowned flower painter. In 1870, however, he relocated to Philadelphia—then known as the City of Flowers. Living in the very heart of America’s commercial rose cultivation practice, Lambdin quickly developed practical and aesthetic interest in horticultural subjects as he began to both cultivate and paint flowers.

With the graceful droop of the wisteria and the curving arabesques of the stems, George Cochran Lambdin captures a natural balance between delicate idealism and photographic realism in Wisteria on a Wall. The present work is one of a series of flower still-life masterpieces painted between 1871 and 1875 that are the works for which Lambdin is best known today. Previously, he had painted primarily charming genre scenes and studies of children that included floral motifs—but only in the 1870s did the flowers of his backgrounds take center stage in his compositions.