Installation and working portrait studio
Victoria & Albert Museum
London
Fantin-Latour’s painting of nasturtiums (capucines in French) inspired Rideal’s interpretation. The reiterated flowers dance up and down in both works, and the tiered layers of individual green glass vessels can be seen to symbolise the idiosyncrasies of the individual portraits whilst simultaneously alluding to their similarities… like leaves; each is unique.
Rideal’s glass collection is an assortment of twentieth century domestic pieces accrued gradually from chance finds. Imported into the context of the V & A, it could be viewed alongside other collections there, for a single night with a garden view of the Brompton Oratory.
Balancing in precarious piles, the ‘veiled verres verts’ alludes to the transitory and fragile nature of life and how wrapped up in it all we are.
Molly Nesbit discusses Eugène Atget’s Nasturtiums (MOMA, NY) in A new history of photography, edited by Michel Frizot,1994, Könemann.