Biography

Spanish painter, known as El Labrador, born at Jaraicejo, a small town in Extremadura. His sobriquet, El Labrador, derived from his preference for living in the country and coming only occasionally to Madrid, where clients often waited for months to receive his small canvases and panels of fruit and flowers. Of approximately 20 still-lifes referred to in documentary sources, the few that can be identified today justify the extravagant praise accorded them for generations after his death. In 1635 Sir Arthur Hopton, British envoy in Madrid, asked the artist to try his hand for the first time at flower painting. The small panel of a Vase of Flowers (1636; private collection) is the artist's only signed work (and records his true surname). It is exquisitely delicate in its chiaroscuro and muted colour and bears out the praise of Ceán Bermúdez, who described a similar pair (untraced) in the Spanish royal collection in 1800. A Still-life with Quinces and Acorns (London, Hampton Court, Royal Collection) was attributed to El Labrador in the inventory of 1639 of the collection of Charles I of England. Its dramatic lighting and satin-smooth chiaroscuro reveal the indirect influence of Caravaggio, as well as a horror vacui, which seems to have characterized El Labrador's compositions. Like other of his works, it has suffered from considerable darkening of certain pigments due to a faulty technique, which further exaggerates the relative contrast of light and dark.

El Labrador's still-lifes were avidly sought by aristocratic collectors in Madrid in the 1630s. His works were also introduced to England by the English diplomatic corps at the Spanish court and to France through the collection of Anne of Austria, sister of Philip IV of Spain and wife of Louis XIII of France. In the early 1630s Giovanni Battista Crescenzi offered Charles I of England four landscapes by El Labrador that were on sale in Madrid. This is the only reference to El Labrador's work in this genre.