In the spring of 1594 the first tulips bloomed in the Netherlands. It was a case of the right thing in the right place at the right time. The Dutch went crazy for tulips. They experienced "Tulipomania," a financial speculation and market collapse that is still studied by economists. They launched an industry that is world famous, now accounting for 90% of the world's tulip production.

They also created art that will endure for all time.

Famous Dutch painters, including Jan Brueghel the Elder, were so taken with the tulip, that they worked them into masterful still-life paintings. Tulips and art became so intertwined that a whole class of tulips has come to be called "Rembrandt tulips" -- though, curiously, Rembrandt himself was not known for floral subjects. 

The "bouquet paintings," as they came to be known, all shared one curious fact: few of the bouquets depicted ever existed. They simply couldn't have, for one reason: the flowers shown together do not bloom at the same time of year.

It was, as they say, a bit of artistic license.

Today, however, these odd pairings wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Thanks to the wonders of modern day "forcing" techniques, tulips and other flowers can be "fooled" to bloom out-of-season -- nearly any time of year -- by careful manipulation of light and temperature conditions.

It is yet another instance of life imitating art.

Old Illustrations

FYI: As the tulip became known to select European botanists in the 1500s, gorgeous illustrations of tulips were being made, including the fabulous Tulipa bononiensis. What is strange is that these illustrations is that they always included some kind of butterfly, but butterflies seldom if ever land on tulip flowers. 

Equally odd, the famous flamed (virused) tulips that came to be known as "Rembrandt tulips" were not a favored subject of the painter, who rarely painted florals. Rather, the name of Rembrandt was applied for its historical timeframe, as Tulipomania occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century when the artists who become known as the Dutch Masters (artists including Rembrandt, Frans Halls, Breughel, and other famous Dutch artists of the era) were most active.