In the middle of a table that covers the entire pictorial field, as the axis of the composition, Arrieta placed a large clay pot covered by a plate, upon which there is a sweet potato cut open. From left to right we can see a decorated cup, a piece of bread, the head of a deer with large antlers, radishes and turnips, a cauliflower, three peaches, a vertically placed frying pan, a jar of cheese, a melon cut open next to a slice, a papaya also cut open, a glass and two crystal decanters, one red and one blue. In the notes that Bernardo Olivares Iriarte wrote in his Artistic Album of 1874, on the occasion of the death of Jose Agustin Arrieta, the artist from Puebla pointed out that one of the genres in which Arrieta had developed a great facility were the so-called "pantries":
"these works are composed of the reproduction of all kinds of objects, pieces of glass, porcelain, bronze objects, fruit, flowers, culinary objects, vegetables, fish, fowl, etc., all combined and assembled to be in harmony with each other; the artist having made compositions of considerable merit for the realism and complete illusion that he has given them. It is widely agreed that up until the present, this genre of works was in a league of its own in this city." [1]
As stated by Olivares, Arrieta would have had no rival in the execution of "pantries", "still lifes" or natures mortes in Puebla. Taken from the record which is available of the work of the painter today, it can be affirmed that he worked all the painting genres. There is little doubt that this one was the most abundant of his production, and from this we can deduce that it was the most requested by Puebla collectors for the decoration of their dining rooms where paintings had the function of arousing the appetite with the "realism and complete illusion" of fruits, vegetables, and food that was prepared or to be prepared; but also with the display of the utensils in which they were made or served.
Both the edible products and the utensils for their preparation in the kitchen and service at the table show the cultural syncretism that characterizes Puebla's gastronomy. In 1879, Guillermo Prieto, avid about seeing the most notable painting collections of the city of Puebla, visited the house of the businessman Francisco Cabrera Ferrando in which he could appraise several works from the brush of Arrieta, among them some still lifes. In the review he wrote in epistolary form of his stay in the city to his friend Ignacio Ramirez, "The Necromancer", the writer referred to the mixture of objects and foods of dissimilar origins as a "struggle of customs", which characterized the culinary culture of Puebla, and which Arrieta had impressed in his still lifes:
"I turned to the other side and ran my hands over the pictures of vegetables, chickens, clutter in which the struggle of customs is reproduced in the middle class, the Saxony jug and the traditional terra cotta pitcher, the ceramic plate with the bird motif from Puebla and the Parisian sugar dish. The consumptive chicken of the sick old man and the suckling beefsteak." [2]
Another notable element in the painting is the deer head. The inclusion of animals in Arrieta's still lifes is frequent. Sometimes they appear alive, such as parrots, hens, pigeons, rabbits and cats, and sometimes dead such as chickens and plucked hens, fish, partridges and deer heads, as is the case of this work and two others from the collection. Also noteworthy, was the inclusion of the two crystal decanters at the far right of the work, probably made in the Puebla factories that were engaged in the production of "European-style" glass.
The decanters also appear in many other works by the artist painted in the 1850s, particularly in those known as, "revolving tables", in which Arrieta displayed his technical skills in representing the transparency and reflections of glass and crystal in a mirror. [3] Arrieta's "pantries" (re)present food in abundance, reserved for the wealthy classes in nineteenth-century Mexico, but also the eclecticism of Puebla's gastronomy and its material culture.
[1] Bernardo Olivares Iriarte, Artistic Album 1874. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Efraín Castro Morales (Edition, Preliminary Study and Notes of Efrain Castro Morales) (Puebla: Gobierno del Estado de Puebla-Secretaría de Cultura, 1987), 54.
[2] Francisco J. Cabrera, La vida en Puebla (Life in Puebla). Crónicas de Fidel (Chronicles of Fidel) (Mexico: s. e., 1987), 49-50.
[3] Angelica Velazquez Guadarrama, La colección de pintura del Banco Nacional de México (The Painting Collection of the National Bank of Mexico). Catalog Nineteenth Century, Volume I (Mexico: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2004), 110-112.
In the middle of a table that covers the entire pictorial field, as the axis of the composition, Arrieta placed a large clay pot covered by a plate, upon which there is a sweet potato cut open. From left to right we can see a decorated cup, a piece of bread, the head of a deer with large antlers, radishes and turnips, a cauliflower, three peaches, a vertically placed frying pan, a jar of cheese, a melon cut open next to a slice, a papaya also cut open, a glass and two crystal decanters, one red and one blue. In the notes that Bernardo Olivares Iriarte wrote in his Artistic Album of 1874, on the occasion of the death of Jose Agustin Arrieta, the artist from Puebla pointed out that one of the genres in which Arrieta had developed a great facility were the so-called "pantries":
