Still Life with Flowers

In the forefront a stone plinth holds a little wicker basket, customary in Arellano, which is overflowing with flowers (tulips, irises, roses and “snowballs” (viburnums) etc.). Above it, and further in the background, hanging from an architectural background with venerated cartouches, are two tightly-packed posies in the form of garlands, made with the same kinds of flowers. Several butterflies can be seen resting and fluttering on a cartouche and among the flowers.

This is one of the artist’s most ambitious compositions, conceived as a pair to another, which is privately owned. It was exhibited in Madrid in 1998, in the exhibition on Juan de Arellano (no. 16). There is perfect unity of rhythm and colour between both pictures, and the opulence and sensuality shown by this canvas and its pair, with the brush strokes of very bright and varied colour in the flowers on the dark background, as well as their meticulous execution, place this pair canvas among the painter’s richest and most attractive. They could be dated between the fifties and sixties, a particularly auspicious period.

This canvas and its pair came from the collection of the Marquess of Moret, who displayed them in the famous exhibition Floreros y Bodegones (Flower Vases and Still Lifes) held in Madrid in 1935.