FERNÁNDEZ, Juan

Spanish painter, known as El Labrador, born at Jaraicejo, a small town in Extremadura. His sobriquet, El Labrador, derived from his preference for living in the country and coming only occasionally to Madrid, where clients often waited for months to receive his small canvases and panels of fruit and flowers. Of approximately 20 still-lifes referred to in documentary sources, the few that can be identified today justify the extravagant praise accorded them for generations after his death. In 1635 Sir Arthur Hopton, British envoy in Madrid, asked the artist to try his hand for the first time at flower painting. The small panelGLOSSARYTerm in painting for a support of wood, metal, or other rigid substance, as distinct from canvas. Until the adoption of canvas in the 15th century nearly all the movable paintings of Europe were executed on wood, and even up to the beginning of the 17th century it is probable that as much painting was done on the one support as on the other. Painters who worked on a small scale often used copper panels (Elsheimer is a leading example), and in the colonial art of South America copper and tin and even lead and zinc were used. On a larger scale, slate has occasionally been used as a support, notably by Rubens for his altarpiece for Sta Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova) in Rome; the picture he originally painted was said to reflect the light unpleasantly and slate was used for the replacement to produce a more matt finish. For wood panels the Italian masters of the Renaissance preferred white poplar, while oak was the most common wood used in northern Europe. Many other types were used, however; analysis of the contents of art galleries has yielded a long list, including beech, cedar, chestnut, fir, larch, linden, mahogany, olive, and walnut. In the 20th century cedar, teak, and dark walnut are favourites, and modern painters have also used plywood, fibre-board, and other synthetic materials as supports. of a Vase of Flowers (1636; private collection) is the artist's only signed work (and records his true surname). It is exquisitely delicate in its chiaroscuroGLOSSARYIn painting, the modelling of form (the creation of a sense of three-dimensionality in objects) through the use of light and shade. The introduction of oil paints in the 15th century, replacing tempera, encouraged the development of chiaroscuro, for oil paint allowed a far greater range and control of tone. The term chiaroscuro is used in particular for the dramatic contrasts of light and dark introduced by Caravaggio. When the contrast of light and dark is strong, chiaroscuro becomes an important element of composition. and muted colour and bears out the praise of Ceán Bermúdez, who described a similar pair (untraced) in the Spanish royal collection in 1800. A Still-life with Quinces and Acorns (London, Hampton Court, Royal Collection) was attributed to El Labrador in the inventory of 1639 of the collection of Charles I of England. Its dramatic lighting and satin-smooth chiaroscuro reveal the indirect influence of Caravaggio, as well as a horror vacui, which seems to have characterized El Labrador's compositions. Like other of his works, it has suffered from considerable darkening of certain pigments due to a faulty technique, which further exaggerates the relative contrast of light and dark.

El Labrador's still-lifes were avidly sought by aristocratic collectors in Madrid in the 1630s. His works were also introduced to England by the English diplomatic corps at the Spanish court and to France through the collection of Anne of Austria, sister of Philip IV of Spain and wife of Louis XIII of France. In the early 1630s Giovanni Battista Crescenzi offered Charles I of England four landscapes by El Labrador that were on sale in Madrid. This is the only reference to El Labrador's work in this genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature..