Blue Roses and Yellow Violets: Flowers and the Cultivation of Color in Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the flowers and gardens visible in France became increasingly defined by the imperatives of commodity capitalism, in particular by the perpetual quest for variety and novelty that characterized the fashion industry. Focusing on the important role that color played in this process, this article shows how floriculture disrupted not only the relationship between the natural and the artificial and the real and the imaginary but also contemporary aesthetic standards and practices of signification.