Still life with fruit (with scorpion and frog)

Hermenegildo Bustos painted a large part of his oeuvre on copper, a technique requiring very fine brushwork in which he showed great mastery. One of the few works that the artist painted on canvas is the present Still Life with Fruit (with scorpion and frog). This piece depicts different types of vegetables and fruit at different stages of maturation, arranged in a series of receding planes against a white background as if they were on shelves. In the first row, we see a Poblano chile, a Chilaca chile, a half tomato, two plums in different positions and, oddly, a frog. The second row consists of a group of prickly pears, a scorpion, three apricots and two sapodilla plums, while the third contains three figs, a watermelon, and, lower down, a pomegranate with a burst skin, underneath which there is an avocado with its stone showing through the pulp, next to a cocoa bean. The last row contains a banana, an apricot and a pear. Both the inside and the outside of all of these items can be seen, some having been cut deliberately and others having burst due to over-ripening. In this work the painter depicts the various agricultural products –each harvested in a different season- with which he probably came into contact in the State of Guanajuato where he lived. The ample color range used in this painting, which forms a pair with another still life, entitled Still Life with Pineapple, executed by the artist in 1877, contrasts markedly with the austere use of color in his works on copper. «This piece once belonged to the collection of Francisco Orozco Muñoz, erstwhile Honorary Inspector of Monuments for the State of Guanajuato and one of the main collectors of Bustos' works in the 1930s and 1940s. It was acquired by the National Fine Arts Institute in 1952, and became part of the MUNAL´s collection in 1992. Claudia Barragán Arellano. Guide, national Museum of Art.