This work and its companion (P4158) belonged to Jean de Croy, Count of Solre and captain of the Flemish Royal Guard of Archers, of which Van der Hamen was a member. Unframed, the two paintings hung in De Croy’s Madrid palace, where they flanked the entrance to the painting gallery. As such, they may have served as a trompe l’oeil expansion of the real space, whose floor they probably reproduce. The playful puppy (P4158) and dog (P6413) may very well be portraits of the Count’s pets. The subject of these paintings is related to the culture of aristocratic hospitality, an indispensible aspect of the palace occupants’ refined lifestyle. One of them shows a wine cooler on the floor and a trenching table covered with green damask velvet that bears sweets, a crystal vase and a clock whose hands indicate it is five o’clock—the perfect time for partaking of these candies.

Both works present large crystal and gilded bronze vases with flower arrangements. These vessels represent a type of luxurious decorative object very much in keeping with the social standing of Van der Hamen’s patron, and the flowers they contain stand out for their copious and varied blossoms. They unquestionably evoke the bouquets that were, in fact, a part of the Solre household’s sumptuous decoration, however they were not painted from life. Their image conveys a sense of artifice in the perfection of each flower and the combination of species that do not blossom at the same time of year.

Each vase has strikingly large ornamental and colorful flowers at the center of the arrangement: two red peonies in one, and two sunflowers in the other. The rest of each bouquet consists of a great variety of medium and small buds, placed to generate a careful and harmonious combination of colors. The long-stem varieties—tulips, irises and gladiolas—rise above the rest. The direction of the light is indicated by a diagonal line that reflects on the wall in the back and was possibly coordinated with the actual light in the room where these works hung. The flowers and leaves on the left are brightly lit and stand out against the dark background, while the silhouette of the leaves on the right is delineated over the lightest part of that wall. The bouquet in the painting with the large dog has more flowers than its companion, as well as some small petals that have fallen onto the table. In the painting with the puppy, Van der Hamen left two blossoms unpainted. The two flat, oval, brick-colored shapes that appear behind some small flowers and leaves correspond to the first stage in the preparation of a red flower like the two totally finished ones that also appear. This curious detail reveals the technique employed by Van der Hamen in some of the larger flowers. Apparently, it consisted of applying the base color to make round shapes slightly smaller that the head of the finished flower, whose form depended on its placement and perspective within the whole. After this first step, the artist worked over the preparatory layer of paint, defining the petals and modeling the forms of each variety with greater detail (Text from Luna, J. J.: El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, pp. 56-57).