- 342
Francisco Barrera Documented in Madrid 1632 - 1657
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Description
- Francisco Barrera
- still life of fish suspended from hooks, together with bowls of fish on raised ledges, with eels and other fish, eggs, cheese, an orange, ceramic pots, a pestle and mortar and a cooking pot, all arranged upon a stone top
- oil on canvas
Provenance
Don Gelasio Oña Iribarren, by 1935 (by whom loaned to the 1935 exhibition).
Exhibited
Madrid, Palacio de la Biblioteca Nacional, Floreros y Bodegones de la Sociedad de Amigos del Arte, 1935, no. 23.
Literature
J. Cavestany, exhibition catalogue, Floreros y Bodegones en la Pintura Española, Palacio de la Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, 1936 and 1940, pp. 153-54, reproduced plate XXVIII, no. I;
W.B. Jordan, exhibition catalogue, Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age, Fort Worth, 1985, p. 185.
W.B. Jordan, exhibition catalogue, Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age, Fort Worth, 1985, p. 185.
Catalogue Note
This painting was included in the famous still life exhibition organised by the Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte, at the Palacio de la Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, in 1935, when it appears to have been the only work by Barrera exhibited. The artist is believed to have received his artistic training in Madrid during the 1620's, when Van der Hamen was the dominant still life painter, and he specialised in painting still lifes in his own idoiosyncratic syle, characterised by an earthy informality. The present work belongs to the artist's full maturity during the 1630s and 1640s and can be compared to his seminal work of a set of The Four Seasons, today in a private collection, Seville (see W.B. Jordan, under Literature, pp. 186-87, reproduced figs. X3-X6).
We are grateful to Dr. William Jordan for confirming the attribution to Francisco Barrera on the basis of photographs.
We are grateful to Dr. William Jordan for confirming the attribution to Francisco Barrera on the basis of photographs.