There is a scarcity of information today about this rare still life painter from Valencia. Although little studied, Tomás Hiepes occupied an important position in the artistic heritage of his region where he became the principal painter among a group of artists who, almost exclusively, painted still lifes. His reputation in Valencia is underlined by Antonio de Orellana, the biographer of Valencian painters who wrote "one did not see baskets of fruit, nor flowers, etc., nor biscuits, nor pates, nor cheeses, nor tarts, nor meat pies, nor the furniture or accessories of the pastry shop or other objects of the same type, well executed conforming to nature, that one did not take it on the spot for a work of Yepes" (see Antonio de Orellana, Biografía Pictórica Valenciana o vida de los Pintores, Arquitectos, Escultores, y Grabadores Valencianos, ed. Xavier de Salas, 1967, pp. 216-19).

Set within a highly formal composition favored by Hiepes in which the vase of flowers is depicted in an almost archaic fashion on a single plane, the present painting displays his characteristic use of chiaroscuro, muted light-brown colors and warm reddish hues. He describes each flower in precise detail within a radially symmetrical arrangement. The present painting can be compared to a pair of signed and dated works of 1644, formerly in the collection of Generoso González, Madrid, until sold by Sotheby's, London, Dec. 14, 1977, lot 72. Hiepes depicts a pair of ornate vases decorated in the same fashion as that in the present painting in A Still Life with Flowers on a Table beside an ebonised Cabinet, currently in a private collection, Madrid (see A.E. Pérez Sánchez, La Nature Morte Espagnole du XVII Siècle á Goya, 1987, p. 151, fig. 155).

Professor Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez is organizing an exhibition of the works of Tomás Hiepes in Valencia, scheduled for Autumn 1995, and has requested the loan of the present painting to that show