Private collection, France.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is unlined. The original stretcher was replaced quite long ago, but after its narrow bar lines had developed with the present distinctive craquelure across the inner surface within them. The thickly woven canvas with its red ground remains remarkably strong, even along the tacking edges. There have been few interventions in the entire life of the painting otherwise, with one apparent partial past cleaning, which seems to have been fairly vague and mainly in the centre, leaving traces of slight wear on the crests of the canvas weave in the background between the flowers and a little wear in the shadows of the central white blossom and in some central dark leaves, but scarcely disturbing the old patina elsewhere. A recent restoration has lightly cleaned the flowers but wisely left this patina and only skimmed the old varnish in the background. There are a few little recent superficial retouchings to the dark leaves between the flowers near the top. However essentially the painting is in a magnificently intact state. 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."

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, 🎐exhibition꧑ catalogue, Riom, Musée Mandet, 1970, no. 26, reproduced).