Tulips in White Pitcher

A graceful bouquet of tulips in warm, rich tones echoes the form and patterns of a white, ceramic pitcher. Having established his reputation by the 1920s as a successful portraitist, Eugene Speicher began painting still lifes. A critic enthused over these modest pictures: “His flower subjects are in no way plodding copies of the objects from which he worked; the latter simply suggested to him a color theme which he worked out with a palette of orchestral fullness. . . . Note how the white pitcher acts as a rest in music to give relief from the activity of the color in the blossoms above.”