Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 1989, lot 5 for £290,000;
With Richard Green, London;
Anonymous sale ('Property of a European Private Collector'), New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1994, lot 65.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a rather older lining and stretcher, which are both strong. The edges have had a certain amount of past scuffs and knocks that have been retouched: at the right edge there is a broken line of retouching presumably from the rubbing of a frame, with a double line of retouching near the middle, but also within the background. There are various retouchings along the base edge with rather more in the base corners, but only occasional minor retouchings up the left edge and scarcely any along the top. Within the main body of the painting there are just a few small retouched old knocks: two in the upper right background probably from the tautening of wedges behind, one of which crosses an outer leaf, one other near the mid left edge is in the red tulip, and there are two retouchings in the blue flowers inside the basket. The paint is exceptionally rich and intact throughout. There is no wear even in the background and the depth of colour and flow of the brushwork beautifully preserved. The signature is also crisp and perfect. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This painting belongs to a select group of large scale floreros or flower still-lifes by Juan de Arellano, the pre-eminent painter of flower-pieces in seventeenth cenౠtury S💝pain, and which are widely held to be his finest achievements. The group consists of perhaps a dozen works, all of which display exuberant bouquets of flowers in monumental open-work baskets set upon stone ledges alongside scattered blooms and miriad insects. They are all of almost identical dimensions and without doubt the most ambitious in conception and most important of all Arellano's still-life designs.

This series of flower paintings can be dated to the late 1660s or the early 1670s, for two works within the group are dated 1671 and 1672 respectively. These are that dated 1671, sold New York, Sotheby's, 11 January 1990 ($715,000) and now in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao,¹ and that signed and dated 1672 published by Kubler and Soria in 1959 as in the collection of Sir William Wiseman in New York.² Other pictures in the group include the pair of still lifes in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, another in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, a painting in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besançon, three more divided between private collections in Spain and Germany³ and that sold New York, Sotheby's, 20 May 1993, lot 123 ($1,102,500). Their style, with its profusion of blooms in intense blues, whites and reds, developed out of Arellano's initial emulation of Flemish models, but with a far greater breadth of technique that was reportedly due, in part at least, to his admiration for the works of Mario Nuzzi, whom he is known to have copied. The exact purpose of these grand floreros has been much discussed, including the possibility that they may have served as decoration for a single room in one of Madrid's great mansions.⁴  Most recently, however, Professor Alonso Pérez-Sanchez has suggested that many of the works appear to have been conceived in smaller groups, either as sets of four or in pairs, such as those preserved in the Prado. The relatively high viewpoint adopted by Arellano would suggest that they were intended to be viewed at eye-level rather than as overdoors or overwindow decorations. What is certain is that the quality and colours of these pieces brought Arellano the highest praise from his contemporaries. His earliest biographer, Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco, described his workshop in the Puerta del Sol near San Felipe el Real as 'one of the most famous painting shops in this Court'  and remarked of Arellano that 'none of the Spaniards surpasses him in eminence on this skill.⁵

 

 

1. Canvas, 84 by 105 cm. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Juan de Arellano, Madrid Fundaçion Caja, 1998, p. 240, no. 60.
2. G. Kubler and M. Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and their American dominions 1500-1800, Baltimore 1959, reproduced fig. 163.
3. Exhibited Madrid, Fundaçion Caja, Juan de Arellano, 1998, nos. 61-66, all reproduced.
4. See the exhibition catalogue, Spanish Still Life from Velazquez to Goya, London, National Gallery, 1995, p. 136;
5. A. A. Palomino de Castro y Velasco, Museo pictorico y escala optica.., Madrid 1715-24, 1947 ed. pp. 963-4.