Lot 344: BARTOLOMÉ PÉREZ MADRID 1634 - 1693

a pair, the former signed and indistinctly dated lower right: B^me. Perez f./año.... the latter signed lower left: B,^me. Perez. facie

both oil on canvas, with traces of gilding to the central images

Quantity: 2

STILL LIFE OF ROSES, TULIPS, IRISES, MORNING GLORY, CHRYSANTHEMUMS AND CARNATIONS ADORNING A STONE NICHE, WITH INSECTS, SURROUNDING AN IMAGE OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD;
STILL LIFE OF ROSES, TULIPS, CARNATIONS, ORANGE BLOSSOM, HYACINTHS, IRISES, MORNING GLORY AND PEONIES ADORNING A STONE NICHE SUPPORTED BY CARYATIDS, WITH BUTTERFLIES, SURROUNDING AN IMAGE OF THE CHRIST CHILD ENCIRCLED BY PUTTI

each: 80.8 by 59.5 cm.; 31 3/4 by 23 1/2 in.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

With Dietmar Antiquitäten, Vienna;
Acquired from the above by the present owners inthe 1970s.

Bartolomé Pérez de la Dehesa was son-in-law to Juan de Arellano, whose daughter Juana he married in 1663. It seems likely that he worked in the workshop of his father-in-law, for whom Palomino records he often painted the figures for his flower garlands. These hitherto unrecorded works are entirely by the hand of Pérez, whose flourishing signature they bear, and they reveal the distinctive individual style for which the artist was hailed as one of the finest painters of floreros during his lifetime and for which he was appointed Pintor del Rey to Charles II, on 22 January 1689. The artist's treatment of the flowers is characterised by a velvety texture and a strong chiaroscuro, which distinguishes his work from the plethora of still lifes erroneously attributed to his hand in the art market today, which are almost certainly of Italian, sub-Nuzzi origin. The artist's predilection for garlands of flowers surrounding religious images, inspired by Daniel Seghers, is demonstrated by the existence of a number of such works, including A Flower Garland with Saint Anthony and a pair of Flower Garlands with Christ and Saint Teresa, each today in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (see the exhibition catalogue, Bodegones y Florereos, Madrid, Museo del Prado, November 1983 - January 1984, pp. 124-125, cat. nos. 96 and 97, reproduced). Regrettably the date on the present painting of Flowers adorning a Stone Niche surrounding the Virgin and Child is illegible, which given there appears to have been little stylistic development to Pérez's style after his celebrated overdoor in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which is dated 1666, renders problematic an accurate dating of the present works.