Hamiltons presented Irving Penn: Flowers, marking the third occasion on which gallery owner, Tim Jefferies, presented an entire series of photographs printed by the legendary photographer as an edition. As with Hamiltons’ previous Penn exhibitions, Cigarettes (2012) and Cranium Architecture (2013), this exhibition of Flowers was the first time this whole series of pictures has been shown together.
As the exclusive UK representative for Mr. Penn’s pictures for over a quarter-century, Hamiltons had the unique privilege of being able to represent the complete Flowers series of 42 print editions, accompanied by a fully illustrated, hardbound catalogue raisonné, published by Hamiltons Gallery in collaboration with The Irving Penn Foundation.
Penn’s Flowers series was initiated from an assignment by American Vogue for the 1967 Christmas edition. This became the first of seven annual assignments that Penn would photograph flowers for Vogue, each year devoting himself to one class of flower. The photographs were collectively published as a book Flowers in 1980: 1967, Tulips; 1968, Poppies; 1968, Peonies; 1969, Orchids; 1970, Roses; 1971, Lilies; 1973, Begonias (Penn also photographed wildflowers in 1973 which appeared in Vogue’s 1974 Christmas edition but were excluded from the Flowers book). Thereafter, Penn returned to the subject right up until his death in 2009.
“I can claim no special knowledge of horticulture… I even confess to enjoying that ignorance since it has left me free to react with simple pleasure just to form and colour, without being diverted by considerations of rarity or tied to the convention that a flower must be photographed at its moment of unblemished, nubile perfection." Irving Penn
Mr. Penn’s major museum retrospective, Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty, opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 23rd October 2015 – 20th March 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a major retrospective exhibition of Penn’s photographs, which opened in April 2017, to mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. The Irving Penn Foundation made a monumental gift to the museum of more than 150 photographs, representing every period of Penn’s dynamic 70 year career, which will be central to the exhibition.
Irving Penn, Single Oriental Poppy (B), New York, 1968 © Irving Penn Foundation
