The Flower Friend, Carl Spitzweg

The Flower Friend, Carl Spitzweg (1860)

Compared to the couple in The Everlasting Bridegroom, the pair shown here at the upper left has come closer to each other. She allows him to kiss her on the cheek, with her right shoulder touching his left. He is giving her a small bunch of roses, flowers of love. Did he perhaps pick them from the rose bush in the garden? The man in the foreground has discreetly turned his back on the lovers while attending to his garden, wearing an elegant dressing gown and a foldable cap on his head. In addition to the wonderful rose bush he also grows ivy and coltsfoot, and even has a pot with an agave cactus. Light has found its way through the density of plants and buildings into this very quiet corner where three people are enjoying life in different ways — or just look as if they are enjoying it; the painting can also be interpreted as a presentation of the difference between the loneliness of a single person and the joy of being with a loved one. The idyllic scene in the "remote corner" could be a deception.