Johan van Hulstijn specialized in painting and watercolouring flowers and fruits. He showed so much talent that he was asked to provide the illustrations for volume 8 of the Flora Batava. Many well-known flower painters contributed to this standard work by Jan Kops, which appeared in twenty-eight volumes between 1800 and 1934. Van Hulstijn lived and worked alternately in Amsterdam, Delft and Utrecht (until 1848) and then moved permanently to Trieste, where his sister lived.