Roses and Lilacs

Julian Alden Weir was born into a family of artists. Hi father, Robert Walter Weir, was a leading American painter and teacher at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. His older brother, John Ferguson Weir, also became a well-known painter and professor at Yale University.

Weir was an American Impressionist, yet his style also reflects influences of academic training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the work of the old masters.

Between 1877 and the 1890s, Weir produced some of his finest still lifes. In Roses and Lilacs he creates interest through contrast by placing the softly-hued roses against a dark background and by displaying the silky flowers in a heavy silver vase.