Still Life with Melon and Pears

In 1939 the Museum of Fine Arts bought this still life from the Matthiesen gallery in London for 300 dollars. Meléndez was then little known outside Spain. A full catalogue of his paintings, by the American scholar Eleanor Tufts, came only in 1985, and this canvas is number 59 in it. It is 85 centimetres across and crowded. A melon with a netted rind lies among pears, and a wine bottle stands cooling in a bucket made of cork. The museum suggests it may belong to the set of still lifes he painted for the Spanish royal family in the early 1770s, though it does not insist. Along the edge of the table at the lower right he left a string of letters, EG L M D S P. They abbreviate his long full name, which ran on through Durazo and Santo Padre, the surnames of his mother's family.