A B R A H A M   B R U E G H E L

1631-1690

“Still Life with flowers”

Oil on canvas, 115 x 90 cm

PROVENANCE:

Pardo Gallery, Paris 1969

LITERATURE:

Michel Faré, La pienture de la nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Paris 1974, p. 300-301

We are grateful to Dr. Fred Mejier for recognising this as the work of Abraham Brueghel. He relates the present painting to the signed works in the Lorenzelli Collection and in Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles.

The artist was born in Antwerp, Belgium, where he spent most of his youth at. Much of his artistic training came from the hands of his father, Jan Brueghel the Younger. Abraham also drew artistic influence for Abraham showed great promise as an artist from an early age, and even starting to make a name for himself in his teenage years.

In 1649, at the age of 18, Abraham went to Italy to serve under commission for Prince Antonio Ruffio of Sicily. It was the first of many commissions in which Abraham demonstrated his artistic abilities in drawing still lifes, usually flowers.

Ten years later, in 1659, Brueghel moved to Rome, Italy and got married to an Italian woman less than a year later. He continued painting portraits of objects in nature, and for his artistic abilities, in 1670 he was invited into the Accademia di San Luca, a Roman academy designated for giving a higher level of education for artists.

A year later, Abraham moved to Naples, Italy, where he remained until his death there in 1690