Lot 76: PEDRO DE CAMPROBÍN Y PASSANO

PEDRO DE CAMPROBÍN Y PASSANO CIUDAD REAL 1605 - 1674 SEVILLE STILL LIFES OF LILIES, ROSES, IRISES, MORNING GLORY AND CARNATIONS, ARRANGED IN GILT VASES, UPON A STONE BALUSTRADE DRAPED WITH A RED CURTAIN, SURROUNDED BY BUTTERFLIES, WITH A VIEW OVERLOOKING THE GROUNDS OF A PALACE Quantity: 2 one signed and indistinctly dated lower right: Po .. amprobin passano f. 16...; the other signed and dated lower left: io de camprobin passano f. 1664. a pair, both oil on canvas each: 43 1/4 by 32 1/4 in.; 110 by 82.3 cm.

P. Cherry, Arte y Naturaleza, Madrid 1999, p. 54, cat. nos. 34 and 35, reproduced.

The Marquess of Bute, by whom acquired in Spain circa 1900;
Lord Rhidion Crichton-Stuart, York Castle, Tanger 1949;
Sale, New York, Phillip's, 10 June 1981, lot 66;
Where purchased by the present owner.

These sumptuous still lifes by Pedro de Camprobín date from the zenith of the artist's career, during the mid-1660s, and rank among his most decorative and elaborate compositions. By the mid-17th century Camprobín had established himself as the most important still life painter in Seville, becoming a founding member of the Painters Academy in 1660 along with the city's other leading artists, including Murillo, Herrera the Younger and Valdes Leal.

Camprobín underwent his artistic training in Toledo, the birthplace of Spanish still life painting, where in 1624 (at the age of 14) he was apprenticed to the religious painter, Luis Tristán, until the latter's death in 1628. By the end of the third decade of the 17th century, Toledo had relinquished its status as one of the pre-eminent artistic centres in Spain and by November 1628 Camprobín had moved to Seville where his presence is recorded on his marriage to Maria de Encalada, the daughter of the painter Antonio de Arnos. Two years later, he became an independent master, entering into the painter's guild of Seville on 3 June 1630. Relatively little is known about his early output, although the existence of only one known religious work, a painting of The Magdalene (signed and dated 1634) in the Iglesia de San Salvador, Seville, suggests that he turned to still life painting at an early stage. The majority of his dated still lifes seem to be from the 1650s onwards, though many undated works almost certainly come from earlier in his career.

The present works belong to the period of Camprobín's full maturity and form part of a small, coherent group of still lifes placed within architectural settings, painted by the artist around 1663-66. Other works belonging to this group, though of smaller dimensions (78 by 56.5 cm. each) and of less elaborate design, include a pair of paintings, signed and dated 1663, in a private collection, Madrid (reproduced in P. Cherry, see Literature., p. 262, nos. 188 and 189); and a pair of unsigned paintings (94 by 73.7 cm. each) sold in New York, Sotheby's, 28 January 1999, lot 247, for $130,000, dated by Prof. William Jordan to circa 1665. These works reveal a new interest in the depiction of still lifes in the outdoors (a phenomena explored at a similar time by other Spanish still life painters such as Juan de Arellano and Tomas Yepes), although the positioning of floreros within the grounds of a palace appears to be particular to the work of Camprobín. The views are almost certainly imaginary (and may derive from northern engravings) but nonetheless seek to evoke the grand palaces of the Sevillian aristocracy, for whose residences they would have been commissioned. The floreros were intended to possess a trompe l'oeil quality, providing the viewer with a snap-shot view of the outdoors, a notion given considerable authenticity through the artist's adoption of a low viewpoint, the positioning of the flowers on an open balustrade, and the inclusion of expansive airy spaces surrounding the blooms of flowers, populated by beautifully observed wild butterflies.

In addition to their primary roles as decorative works, it seems highly probable that these paintings, through the inclusion of butterflies and fallen blooms, served also to act as a reminder of the fragility of human life, a fact unlikely to have been lost on Camprobín following the events of the bubonic plague of 1649 which halved the population of Seville and claimed the life of his close contemporary, Juan de Zurbarán.