Still-Life with Oranges and Walnuts

still-life

Judged the most talented student in the Spanish Royal Academy in 1745, Meléndez was expelled in 1748 as a result of a public dispute between the Academy and his father, also a painter. The expulsion prevented the artist from receiving commissions for altarpieces or large narrative pictures. In the last twenty years of his life he executed a hundred or so still lifes, for which he has now become famous.

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About the Artist

Luis Meléndez

1716 – 1780

Spanish still-life painter, active mainly in Madrid. He is regarded as the finest Spanish painter in his speciality in the 18 th century continuing the austere traditions of the 'bodegón' established by Sanchez Cotán, as well as Velázquez and Zurbarán. He is sometimes called 'the Spanish Chardin' but he spent much of his life in poverty. He was trained by his father and L. M. van Loo in Spain. He was van Loo's assistant 1742-48. He worked in Madrid and revisited Italy before 1775. His work is rare outside Spain, but there is an example in the National Gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris has a striking self-portrait, signed and dated 1746. The self-portrait is his earliest known work, in which he looks younger than thirty.

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