Studio of Juan de Arellano

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, 30 November 1983, lot 48, for £17,000 (as Arellano);

Where acquired for the Grasset Collection.

F.G. Meijer, Brueghel to Canaletto, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, exh. cat., San Diego 2016, p. 35, nos 32 and 33, reproduced in colour (as Arellano);

S. Thomas, A Feast for the Eyes, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, exh. cat., Saint Petersburg, Florida 2019, pp. 14–17 and 94, nos 1 and 2, reproduced in colour (as Arellano).

San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art, Brueghel to Canaletto, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, 2 April – 2 August 2016, nos 32 and 33 (as Arellano);

Saint Petersburg, Florida, Museum of Fine Arts, A Feast for the Eyes, European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection, 23 March – 2 September 2019, nos 1 and 2 (as Arellano).

This pair of colourful bouquets presents an interesting conundrum. One, an attractive arrangement of white tulips with red striations, white lilies, hollyhock, jasmine and hyacinth, is signed lower right with the name of Juan de Arellano, the leading flower painter of seventeenth-century Spain; while the other, an arrangement with tulips, anemones, white roses and cornflowers, bears a signature in a similar style, also in the lower right corner but probably added later. In view of this discrepancy it is possible that the two works were not initially conceived as a pair. The canvases, which are unlined and strengthened at the tacking edge, both have a narrow added section along the top edge, which suggests they may have been adapted as a pair at an early date. Brightly lit against plain dark backgrounds, the vivid blooms in stemmed glass vases are highly decorative.

We are grateful to Dr Peter Cherry, Dr Benito Navarrete and Dr Fred G. Meijer for their opinions on the basis of digital images.