About This Artwork

Juan Sánchez Cotán
Spanish, 1560–1627

Still Life with Game Fowl, 1600/03

Oil on canvas
26 11/16 x 34 15/16 in. (67.8 x 88.7 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block, 1955.1203

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Los Angeles, UCLA Art Galleries, Dickson Art Center, Spanish Masters, January 25–March 6, 1960; traveled to Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, March 25–May 1, 1960, cat. 8.

Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Grandes Maestros de los Siglos XV, XVI, XVII y XVIII, November 5–December 17, 1967, cat. 6.

Forth Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age 1600–1650, catalogue by William Jordan, May 11–August 4, 1985; traveled to Toledo Museum of Art, September 8–November 3, 1985, cat. 4.

Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, La Imitación de la Naturaleza: Los Bodegones de Sánchez Cotán, November 17, 1992–January 17, 1993, cat. 2.

Chicago, Art Institute, Chicago’s Dream, A World’s Treasure: The Art Institute of Chicago 1893–1993, November 1–January 9, 1994, no cat.

London, The National Gallery, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, catalogue by William Jordan and Peter Cherry, February 22–May 21, 1995, cat. 2.

Boston, Mass., Museum of Fine Arts, El Greco to Velázquez, April 20, 2008-July 27, 2008, cat. 52, traveled to Durham, North Carolina, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, August 21, 2008-November 9, 2008, pp. 59, 112-14, 119, 252, 268-69, 275, 323, no. 52.

Publication History

August L. Mayer, Geschichte der spanischen Malerei, Leipzig, 1922, p. 361.

Die Weltkunst 2, no. 49 (December 3, 1933), p. 5.

August L. Mayer, Historia de la pintura española, Madrid, 1942, p. 384.

“Accessions of American and Canadian Museums: July-September, 1955,” The Art Quarterly 19 (1956), p. 73, 76 (ill.).

The Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 50 (1956), p. 37 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 409.

Pontus Grate, Spanska Mästare: En Konstbok från Nationalmuseum (Stockholm, 1960), p. 115, ill.

Ramón Torres Martín, Zurbarán: El Pintor Gótico del Siglo XVII (Seville, 1963), p. LXXX, fig. 28.

William Jordan, “Juan van der Hamen y León: A Madrilenian Still-Life Painter,” Marsyas 12 (1964–1965), p. 63, fig. 18.

Ingvar Bergström, Maestros españoles de bodegones y floreros del siglosXVII (Madrid, 1970), pp. 20-21.

John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (New York, 1970), p. 256 (ill.).

Ramón Torres Martin, La Naturaleza Muerta en la Pintura Española (Barcelona, 1971), p. 48, fig. 8.

Diego Angulo Iñiguez and Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Historia de la pintura española: Escuela toledana de la primera mitad del siglo XVII (Madrid, 1972), p. 97, no. 204, pl. 72.

José Gudiol Ricart, “Nature mortes de Sánchez Cotán (1561–1627),” Pantheon 35 (1977), pp. 311–18, fig. 1.

Ingvar Bergström et al., Stilleben. Die grosse Zeit des europäischen Stillebens, Zurich, 1979, p. 212 (ill.).

Gerhard Langemeyer and Hans Albert Peters, eds., Stilleben in Europa, exh. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst-und Kulturgeschichte Münster and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1979, p. 386.

G. Fernández Bayton, Inventarios Reales, testamentaria de Rey Carlos II (1701-1703), vol. 2, Madrid, 1981, pp. 144, no. 132.

Pintura española de bodegones y floreros de 1600 a Goya, exhib. cat. (Museo del Prado, Madrid, 1983-84), pp. 28-29.

Betty Dietz Krebs, “Mystery Part of Toledo Art Museum Exhibit,” Dayton Daily News (September 1, 1985), p. 2–D (ill.).

Fritz Koreny, Albrecht Dürer und die Tier- und Planzenstudien der Renaissance, exh. cat., Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, 1985, p. 43, fig. 6.

Nina Ayala Mallory, “Museum News: Spanish Still-Life in the Golden Age, 1600-1650,” Art Journal 45 (1985), p. 354.

Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, La nature morte espagnole du XVIIe siècle à Goya, Fribourg, 1987, p. 21, fig. 6.

James N. Wood and Katherine C. Lee, Master Painting in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1988), p. 25 (ill.).

William B. Jordan, “A Newly Discovered Still Life by Juan Sánchez Cotán,” Burlington Magazine 132 (1990), pp. 96–99, fig. 19.

Peter Cherry, “Madrid. Sánchez Cotán at the Prado,” Burlington Magazine 135 (1993), pp. 164-66, fig. 118.

Emilio Orozco Díaz, El Pintor Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán (Granada 1993), pp. 368-9, ill. p. 193.

John W. Smith, “The Nervous Profession: Daniel Catton Rich and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1927-1958,” The Art Institute of Chicago: Museum Studies 19, no. 1 (1993), p. 69, fig. 15.

Bodo Vischer, "'La transformacíon den dios': zu den Stilleben von Juan Sánchez Cotán, 1560-1627," Zeitchrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 38 (1993), p. 280, pl. 2.

Evaristo Baschenis e la natura morta in Europa, exh. cat., Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Bergamo, 1996, p. 23, fig. 9.

Peter Cherry, “The Hungry Eye: the Still Lifes of Juan Sánchez Cotán,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 65 (1996), pp. 82–83, 85, 90, 94, fig. 6.

Claus Grimm, Natures Mortes: Italiennes, espagnoles et françaises aux XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1996), p. 93, fig. 37.

William B. Jordan, “Sánchez Cotán, Juan” in Dictionary of Art, vol. 27 (New York, 1996), p. 706.

William B. Jordan, An Eye on Nature: Spanish Still-Life Paintings from Sánchez Cotán to Goya, exh. cat., Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., (London, 1997), pp. 30–34, under cat. 1.

Peter Cherry, Arte y Naturaleza: El Bodegón Español en el Siglo de Oro (Aranjuez, 1999), pp. 32–34, pl. 8.

Georges Herzog, Albrecht Kauw (1616-1681): Der Berner Maler aus Strassburg (Bern 1999), pp. 83-4, fig. 43.

Felix Scheffler, Das spanische Stilleben des 17. Jahrhunderts: Theorie, Genese und Entfaltung einer neuen Bildgattung (Frankfurt, 2000), p. 249, fig. 132.

María José López Terrada, “Hernández and Spanish Painting in the Seventeeth Century” in Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, Stanford, California, 2000, pp. 155, 167, fig. 4.

David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, London, 2001. p. 107, ill.

Old Master Pictures, auction cat., Christie’s, London, December 8, 2004, under lot 94, pp. 174–5, fig. 3.

Matthias Weniger, "Verzeichnis der spanischen Gemälde in deutschen Sammlungen" in Matthias Weniger et al., Greco, Velázquez, Goya. Spanische Malerei aus deutschen Sammlungen, exhib. cat. Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 2005, pp. 242-43, ill.

William B. Jordan, Juan van der Hamen y León and the Court of Madrid, exh. cat., Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, and Meadows Museum, Dallas, 2006, pp. 54-58, 300, fig. 3.6.

Lisa Wainwright, Things of Nature and the Nature of Things: John Wilde, exhib. cat., Chazen Museum of Art, 2006, pp. 14-15, 22, fig. 9.

Edward J. Sullivan, The Language of Objects in the Art of the Americas, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 25, fig. 18.

William B. Jordan, “La Gallería del Mediodía de El Pardo y los orígenes de la naturaleza muerta en Madrid” in Los pintores de lo real, Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2008, pp. 126, 128, 130-35.

John B. Ravenal, “Notes on Black,” in Carter Ratcliff, Donald Sultan: The Theater of the Object, New York, 2008. p. 25, ill.

Cristina Marinas, "L'Amérique dans la nature morte espagnole" in Tomate et chocolat. Usages alimentaires et créolisation culturelle, ed. Pascale Budillon Puma, Paris, 2008, pp. 27-28, 37, ill.

Peter Cherry, “Introduction: In the presence of things. Two centuries of still-life painting,” in In the presence of things: Four Centuries of European still-life painting, exhib. cat., Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2010, vol. 1, pp. 25, 41, n. 47.
 
Peter Cherry , “The golden age of still-life painting in Spain and Italy,” in In the presence of things: Four Centuries of European still-life painting, exhib. cat., Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2010, vol. 1, pp. 69, 72-73, 78, fig. 37.

Ownership History

Probably in the artist’s possession, Toledo, before he retired to a Carthusian monastery, in August 1603 [inventory 1603, no. V, (“Un lienzo de frutas adonde está el ánade y otros tres pájaros ques de Diego de Valdivieso”; Jordan in Madrid 1992, pp. 41–43); Diego de Valdivieso, Toledo, 1603 [see 1603 inventory cited by Jordan 1992]. Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, Toledo or Huerta de Sandoval, near Madrid (died 1618); acquired from his estate with 4 other still lifes for the decoration of the Galería del Mediodía in the royal hunting lodge of El Pardo, the series completed by an additional still life commissioned for this purpose from Juan van der Hamen [according to a note of 10 September 1619 in the accounts of the royal household; see José María de Azcárate, “Algunas noticias sobre pintores cortesanos de siglo XVII” Anales de Instituto de estudios Madrileños, 6 (1970), p. 60; see also Jordan 2006, pp. 54-58,]; royal inventories of 1653, no. 145 (“145. Un frutero Pequeño Con su marco de oro y negro y un Melon abierto en medio”, A small fruit still life with its black and gold frame with an open melon in the middle; an inventory number 145 is inscibed in the lower left corner of the painting; see Jordan 2006, pp. 58, 300, n. 24) and 1701/03, no. 132 (Fernández Bayton 1981, vol. 2, p. 144, no. 132). August L. Mayer, Munich, by 1922 [see Mayer 1922]; sold, Munich, Hugo Helbing, November 24–25, 1933, lot 79, pl. 4, as Sánchez Cotán, Küchenstilleben for 380 Marks [the price based on Die Weltkunst 1933; that the picture belonged to Mayer can be deduced from the provenance of no. 74 in this sale, which later entered the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen]. Private collection, Germany [according to 1955 receipt from Frederick Mont, in curatorial file]. Frederick Mont and Newhouse Galleries, New York, by 1955 [1955 receipt citied above and shipping invoice, in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1955.