This oil was painted by Diego Rivera in Paris, where he resided and worked between 1909 and 1921. It was acquired by his Parisian dealer Leonce M. Rosenberg shortly after it was completed in 1916 and remained in his collection untilit was acquired by the present owners in the Netherlands, some time in the 1930s.
Naturaleza Muerta con Tulipanes shares similar stylistic elements with Still Life with Toothbrush and Sponge and Still Life with Green House, which involve Rivera's experiments at the time with the "Fourth Dimension" and representing multi-colored spatial refractions turned into Neo-Platonic volumetric geometry, and austere stabilizing and translucent planes and Divisionist-rendered shadows which he combined with trompe l'oeil realism of opaque surfaces and parts of objects. This still life of a vase of pink tulips and small glazed ceramic bowl of either Mexican, Spanish, or Russian design (the same bowl appears in earlier Cubist Still lifes by Rivera), is perched on the same wooden shelf which juts out from the wall as in the other two works cited above, and this painting which is compositionally the most complex of the three, includes a dark-green pleated drape that hangs behind the shelf and encloses it dramtically like a Modern classical Renaissance still life.
Ramon Favela, Santa Barbara, 1992

This painting is sold with a certificate of authenticity from Dr. Ramon Favela, dated March 6, 1992; and will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Dr. Favela