Juan de Zurbarán, A Pear and Apples on a Pewter Plate, Seville, ca. 1641-42, oil on canvas, 33.5 x 42 cm. NICHOLAS HALL at TEFAF 2024. © 2024 TEFAF.

Provenance: Lorenzo Ruís de Flores (d. 1920), Seville; by inheritance to
Soledad Ruíz y Marrón (d. 1940), married to Diego de León y Primo de Rivera, Marqués de Sobremonte; her son Diego
de León Ruiz (1923–2001), Madrid; his wife
Pilar Herreros de Tejada Cabeza de Vaca (1931–2015), Madrid; her son
Pedro de León, Herreros de Tejada, Madrid, until sold at
Alcalá Subastas, Madrid, 20 October 2022, lot 736.

This is an exceptionally rare still-life painting by the Sevillian specialist in the genre, Juan de Zurbarán, who died at the early age of 29, leaving behind an oeuvre of just 13 paintings. Until 1938 when cleaning revealed the unmistakable signature of Juan de Zurbarán on a Still life with Chocolate Service in the Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Kiev, the existence of Juan had gone unnoticed. Juan trained with his father Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), the pre-eminent Sevillian painter of the first half of the seventeenth century whose only signed still life is the Still Life with a Basket of Lemons in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

Our painting has been dated by Peter Cherry and Odile Delenda to ca. 1641 and forms part of a small group of close-up views of fruits on a platter seen against a dark background. Examples by Juan de Zurbarán have recently been acquired by the Museo del Prado and the National Gallery, London.