Irish Floral and Botanical Prints: Flowers in Irish Art and How to Hang Them
Irish floral prints are easiest to find by starting with the painters rather than the plants: Roderic O'Conor's crimson bouquets, Harry Clarke's Art Nouveau textile patterns, Mildred Anne Butler's Kilmurry garden and the poppies of Norman Garstin. Ireland has no tradition of the grand flower piece to match the Dutch, so the best floral art here comes sideways, from artists who were painting something else and let flowers into the picture. This guide covers who they are, what suits which room, and how to hang them. Everything below is on the Botanical & Floral Prints collection, part of the wider Irish art prints range.
Roderic O'Conor: flowers as colour
O'Conor (1860–1940) was born in Roscommon and spent most of his working life in France. His late floral still lifes are among the most saturated flower pictures any Irish painter made. Mixed Flowers on Pink Cloth, from around 1916, sets crimson, scarlet and vermilion blooms against acid greens and the warm pink of the cloth beneath, in a softer and more intimate register than his Breton landscapes. If you want one flower print with real presence, this is the place to start. His wider story is in our Roderic O'Conor page.
Harry Clarke: the flower as pattern
Harry Clarke is known for stained glass and book illustration, but he also designed textiles. His floral and butterfly designs of 1918–19 show the same controlled, intricate linework as his windows, and they suit a modern room better than you might expect. A pattern print reads almost as texture, which makes it a good choice for a hallway or a spot where a landscape would feel too large. See Harry Clarke for the full picture.
Mildred Anne Butler: the garden at Kilmurry
Butler (1858–1941) spent her whole life at Kilmurry, near Thomastown in Co. Kilkenny, painting its birds, animals, flowerbeds and rooftops in watercolour. Her work is best known for the birds and the light, but the garden is the thread running through it, and few Irish artists looked so closely at one place. Her story, including the sale that brought four hundred of her works back into view, is told in the garden at Kilmurry, and her prints are gathered on the Mildred Anne Butler collection.
Water, poppies and lilies
Some of the most interesting Irish flower pictures are not bouquets. Mainie Jellett's A Water-Lily Pond (1919) turns water lilies into interlocking planes of colour, an early step towards the abstraction she would develop in Paris. Norman Garstin, born in Limerick and a leading figure of the Newlyn School in Cornwall, painted flowers in daylight, and his Poppies is available on stretched canvas. Nathaniel Hone the Younger's Lilies and Butterflies is a smaller, quieter option.
How to hang a floral print
Match the picture to the room by colour first. A strongly coloured piece like O'Conor's works in a plain, pale room where it can be the one warm note; a patterned Clarke suits a space that already has some softness. In a kitchen or dining room, a single mid-sized flower print at eye level is usually enough. In a bedroom, a pair of smaller prints side by side feels calmer than one large one.
Frame choice matters as much as the picture. Wood frames suit the warmer, painterly pieces, while white or black gives a cleaner edge to patterns and abstraction. Our framing guide goes through sizes and mounts. Prints are made on archival 250gsm matte paper, framed or unframed, and ship free worldwide.
If you are still choosing, start with the Botanical & Floral Prints collection and let the colours decide.