MELÉNDEZ, Luis
(b. 1716, Napoli, d. 1780, Madrid)

Still-Life with Oranges and Walnuts

1772
Oil on canvas, 61 x 81 cm
National Gallery, London

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. Although nearly half were first recorded in the Spanish royal residence at Aranjuez, they may not have been commissioned by the king directly from the painter, who died in poverty.

This picture is one of a group of the artist's largest and finest works, perhaps made in connection with his second petition to the king to become court painter. Like most of Meléndez's still lifes, it focuses attention simultaneously on the geometrical forms of the homely and characteristically Spanish objects depicted - oranges, walnuts, a melon, wooden sweet boxes and barrel, terracotta jugs - and on their surface texture, and both shape and texture are revealed through the strong light falling from the upper left of the painting. The colours are restricted to black, white and a range of earth tones, relieved only by the brilliant orange. The spectator's viewpoint, so close to the picture surface, is located just above the smaller of the two jugs. Only the cracked walnuts allow us a glimpse of their edible flesh, among the unpeeled fruit and the sealed containers of sweetmeats, olives and oil, tantalisingly displayed humble products of Spanish soil and industry, ennobled by the artist's brush.