Lot 50: Juan de Arellano , Santorcaz 1614 - 1676 Madrid Still life with flowers in a glass vase, including blue irises and parrot tulips, arranged on a stone ledge oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 55.5 by 44.5 cm.; 21 7/8 by 17 1/2 in.

Private collection, France.

With this intimate work Arellano has exercised unusual restraint with both his composition and variety of flowers chosen, so that it differs markedly to the large, opulent, multi-coloured works for which he is best known. The breadth with which it is painted points to a date of execution in the 1660s or 1670s when Arellano's style was influenced to a great degree by his studying of the work of the Italians Mario Nuzzi and Marguerita Caffi. In terms of its scale and particular arrangement of the individual flowers, it closely resembles a signed work that sold in Madrid, Sotheby's Edmund Peel, 21 May 1991, lot 7, for 31,360,000 pts.

Arellano only began painting flowers still lifes in the late 1640s when well into his thirties, leaving a behind a career as a mediocre figure painter. At first he painted wreaths of flowers decorating sculpted cartouches, of a type inspired by northern artists, such as Daniel Seghers, that was immensely popular in Spain. It is however with his later paintings, such as the present work, that his legacy lived on, principally through his students Bartolomé Perez and his son José de Arellano.

We are grateful to Prof. Enrique Valdivieso for pointing out that this painting originally formed a pair with a work in a private collection that was exhibited in Riom, Museo Mandet in 1970 (for which see Collections privées d'Auvergne, exhibition catalogue, Riom, Musée Mandet, 1970, no. 26, reproduced).