Basket of Flowers and View of a Royal Palace of Valencia
1844. Oil on canvas.Not on display
Miguel Parra was one of the most important artists in Valencia during the first half of the nineteenth century. he held leading posts in artistic institutions in that city and añsp in the court, to which he was brought by his brother-in-law, Vicente López. He specialized in large flower paintings with great decorative density derived from local and foreign models from the second half of the seventeenth century, but updated with furnishings and decorative motives from his own time. That is the case with this work and its pair (P7940), whose compositions are very ambitious. This work has considerable documentary interest, as its background includes a painting of the Royal Palace of Valencia, with the fountains and outbuildings that adorned its surroundings in the mid nineteenth century. The palace also appears in another of Parra´s works, now in the Casita del Príncipe at El Escorial.