Francisco Barrera

In a Texas family collection, before 1960, in their hotel in Laredo, Texas;
Thence by descent to the present collectors.

Francisco Barrera is best known for his seasonal still lifes, often painted in large-scale, featuring an array of foodstuffs, arranged naturally on stone steps or ledges, with a window or vista of a landscape beyond.  The artist's most celebrated work of this genre is the Four Seasons series, dating to 1638, in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville.¹

Along with the following lot, this unpublished still life of seasonal foods once formed part of a set of twelve allegorical depictions of the calendar months.  Eight of the twelve canvases have now been located, including four in private collections and another three united in the Slovak National Museum, Bratislava.  The Allegory for the Month of April, similarly inscribed in gold letters along the lower edge of the canvas, was included in William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry's 1995 exhibition, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya at the National Gallery, London.²

We are grateful to William Jordan for proposing an attribution to Francisco Barrera upon firsthand inspection of the works.

1.  W.B. Jordan and P. Cherry, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, exhibition catalogue, London 1995, p. 64, Summer reproduced p. 65, fig. 46.
2.  Ibid., p. 64, cat. no. 18, reproduced p. 65.