TOMAS HIEPES, OR YEPES (1598) / Valencia (1668) "Birds in a

Oil on canvas. Reference bibliography: Cherry, P., Art and Nature. Spanish Still Life of the Golden Age, Madrid, 1999, early 271-285; Lopez Terrada, MJ, "The Still Life Painting of Tomas Yepes (c.1600 - 1674)", Ars Longa, no. 21, 2012, early 233-251; Marco, V., Baroque Painting in Valencia (1600-1737), CEEH, Madrid, early 189-196. One of the most important figures of the Valencian Baroque school was Tomas Hiepes, known mainly for his role as a still life painter. An equally important part of his production is very close to genre painting, in which Hiepes creates a type of work in which he attaches great importance to the landscape and whose protagonists are hunters with their trophies, birds in the open air, poultry and gardens with the presence of humans or some kind of animal. The technical and formal aspects of this painting allow it to be assigned to the Valencian painter and to be related to some of his compositions that, with this same theme, are preserved in some collections. Among the most successful are those of the Fondation Rau pour le Tiers-Monde in Zurich (Marco, 2021, cat. 74 and 102), which show farmyard and exotic animals located in beautiful gardens, but there are also known cases of birds represented outdoors such as the one that appeared in international trade with a Common Thrush, partridges, quails and black-tailed godwit in a landscape (Marco, 2021, cat. 110). As Lopez Terrada (2012, early 248-249) pointed out, the rigorous precision of the drawing, the closed silhouette and the stillness of these animals give them a somewhat naive and linear appearance, which is why it has been thought that Yepes used engraved repertoires and even that his models were stuffed animals. This character notably differentiates him from the dynamism and baroque tone of the compositions of other painters outside Spain who specialized in the genre during the 17th century, such as Adriaen van Utrecht (1599-1652) or Melchior de Hondecoeter (1636-1695); Yepes undoubtedly took his inspiration from them in the creation of this composition, in the same way as other Valencian painters did in the 1960s, such as Miguel March, as can be seen in his Kite Attacking a Henhouse in the Prado Museum (Marco 2021, cat. 25) or the Pair of Dead Birds in a Landscape from the former Estoup collection (Marco 2021, cat. 26). The painting shows a brand new rooster accompanied by a pair of hens with their corresponding retinue of chicks receiving a visit from an elusive bird that sneaks into the foreground. As Cherry pointed out in his study (1999, p. 281), Yepes shows his meticulousness and his taste for detail and exquisite finishes, taking into account the careful representation of the plumage of the birds and the botanical species represented. Measurements: 90 x 115 cm.