Spanish school; first half of the 19th century.

Spanish school; first half of the XIX century.
"Still life".
Oil on canvas. Preserves original canvas.
It has original frame with faults.
Measurements: 63 x 83 cm; 72 x 92 cm (frame).
During the nineteenth century, the genre of still life in Spanish painting experienced a significant continuity with respect to the traditions established during the Golden Age, especially with regard to the Baroque heritage. Far from being relegated in the face of the emergence of new aesthetic currents, such as romanticism, realism or the first impulses of naturalism, the still life persisted as a privileged space for technical experimentation, symbolic exploration and compositional virtuosity.
The permanence of the Baroque model is particularly visible in the choice of the objects represented, in the rigorous composition of the scenes and in the use of chiaroscuro to generate volume and depth. Thus, many artists of the 19th century returned to the arrangement of elements on sober surfaces, the meticulous treatment of textures, burnished metals, ripe fruits, earthenware, glass, wilted flowers and the creation of silent atmospheres that refer directly to the models of Francisco de Zurbarán, Juan Sánchez Cotán or Juan van der Hamen y León.
However, this return to the Baroque was not a simple exercise of stylistic repetition, but a re-reading adapted to the visual and cultural codes of the 19th century. In this context, the still life became a field of academic affirmation and technical refinement, where painters could display their mastery of drawing, color and optical illusion. In this way, it became fully integrated into the official art circuits.
Some artists, such as Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, Antonio María Esquivel or Ramón Martí Alsina, developed compositions of remarkable quality, in which fidelity to detail coexists with a certain poetics of the object. In Catalonia, for example, the still life tradition flourished especially around academic realism, while in Madrid, painters linked to the Court and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando cultivated it with a more historicist spirit.