Vintage Art Appreciation: Garden Scenes by Alfonse Van Besten

Ma femme (Mrs. A. Van Besten), 1913

Blossom and lady, ca. 1913

Young girl amidst marguerites, ca. 1912

Van Besten painting in his garden, 1909

A series of photographs from the early 20th century by Belgian artist Alfonse Van Besten (1865 - 1926). Van Besten was a painter and many of his autochromes were taken with a "painterly eye." You can find many more of his autochrome photographs on the Belgian Autochromists website here.

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A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in ― what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

What I've always found interesting in gardens is looking at what people choose to plant there. What they put in. What they leave out. One small choice and then another, and soon there is a mood, an atmosphere, a series of limitations, a world.
Helen Humphreys, The Lost Garden

She wandered around Sally's garden, sipping coffee, stopping to admire the grevillea and talk to the chickens. As the warmth of the sun unknotted the tension in her spine, Alice noticed a lush alley of potted tropical plants alongside the house: monstera, bird of paradise, agave, staghorns and ferns. Alice was filled with a sense of wonder; it was a garden within a garden, so meticulous and well-tended in contrast to the wild beauty surrounding it. The sumptuous blends of greens. The varying, glossy foliage.
Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Vintage Art Appreciation: Coffee in the Garden by Daniel Ridgway Knight

Coffee in the Garden
by Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839 - 1924)

For pleasure has no relish unless we share it.
Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Khalil Gibran

Friends are those rare people who ask how we
are and then wait to hear the answer.
Ed Cunningham

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Free Vintage Landscape for Cardmaking, Journaling or Scrapbooking: Pretty Country Lane with Summer Wildflowers

It's your road, and yours alone.
Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
Rumi

A vintage scenic postcard from 1917, showing a landscape with a pretty country road leading into the distance to a red-roofed cottage or farmhouse. A profusion of summer wildflowers line the way.You can download this free high-resolution 6" x 9" illustration without a watermark for greeting card, travel journal or scrapbooking projects by clicking here.

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From my personal collection of ephemera. All digital scans by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if sharing or publishing.