Francisco Oller, Still Life with Plantains and Bananas and Still Life with Coconuts

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0:00:05.3 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We are here at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in front of two still lifes by Puerto Rican artist Francisco Oller. These two still lifes represent bananas and plantains and coconuts.

0:00:18.1 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: These two still lifes were likely intended as a pair, perhaps to hang in a dining room. He’s painted it so that the plantains have this beautiful arcing quality that leads our eye around.

0:00:31.8 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: He does lead our eye in a very dynamic manner around the composition. From those green plantains, we can then move almost to the middle ground or background, where we find two different types of bananas. We have yellow bananas, and then we also have what are called in Puerto Rico guineo mafafos. Then we see that batch of plantains attached still to its stalk. And at the end of the stalk we have a leaf that visually also references the harvest, the plant from which these fruits came. As we follow that leaf, we find very ripe bananas. And in the foreground we have the representation of a lone baby banana, known in Puerto Rico as a guineo niño.

0:01:10.3 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: Some of the riper bananas are painted with looser brushstrokes, where we get the impression of the skin and the flesh inside as it’s beginning to turn.

0:01:19.3 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: His interest in still life does relate to his time in Europe, where he met Impressionists like Camille Pissarro.

0:01:27.6 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: Oller is one of many artists who could be considered a transatlantic artist, going back and forth to their home country and Europe. And that is very much what Oller did. He spent several different periods of his life in parts of Europe but would also return to Puerto Rico.

0:01:44.0 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: These still lifes were painted around 1890, and Oller’s most recent European period was in Madrid, where he lived some six years. And he came back to Puerto Rico in 1883. During that last period in Madrid, he became familiarized with the painting of still life artist Luis Meléndez, whose work he saw at the Prado Museum.

0:02:04.8 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: And who was the most famous painter of still lifes of 18th-century Spain.

0:02:09.8 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Meléndez painted a series for King Charles IV in which he represented typical foods from Spain in rather compact compositions in a naturalistic manner. And it is possible that Oller may have had these paintings in mind when he approached this type of fruit in Puerto Rico.

0:02:30.0 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: He would have also been able to observe paintings by artists like Juan Sánchez Cotán and Zurbarán, who were quite famous in their day for their ability to paint naturalistic still life paintings. Although where the 17th-century painters might have this sharp spotlight on the fruits with this very dark background, Oller is not really giving us an indication of any space. He’s placing his fruit against this gray, almost monotone background, but like those other painters in this very compressed composition.

0:03:02.2 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Even though we have our gray background, he still does add elements that contribute to the visual interest of these compositions. In the foreground, in both still lifes, we have the edge of the table that contributes to the sense of perspective and depth. These simple wooden tables also add to the sense of familiarity and the everyday. In the painting of the plantains and bananas, we do have that element of the knife, perhaps used to cut a little piece of a banana to eat. And in the still life of the coconuts, he has added a machete on the table that visually alludes to the harvesting of these coconuts. It’s almost as if these coconuts have been freshly harvested and they have just arrived at the kitchen.

0:03:47.6 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: We see Oller instilling a certain monumentality or noble dignity to these everyday fruits.

0:03:53.9 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: And just like in the plantain still life, in the coconut painting, we find that interest of representing the life cycle of the fruit. We have a great bunch of coconuts dominating the composition. Toward the right, we have branches with small coconuts still developing, and green coconut that has been cut in half so we can see the white flesh of the coconut. So we have all those visual references that gives us a more complete picture of the life cycle of the fruit.

0:04:20.3 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: I’m reminded of Oller when he is engaged at the studio of Courbet and he’s learning about this heroization of everyday subjects. He really does give this nobility to these very common fruits that we associate with the Caribbean. And so, even though Oller is part of this wave of artists who are spending time in places like Madrid, like Paris, Puerto Rico was never far from his mind, as we see in paintings like this.

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Osiris Delgado Mercado, Francisco Oller y Cestero: Pintor de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Centro de Estudios Superiores de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1983).

Tamara Díaz Calcaño,  “Michel-Jean Cazabon y Francisco Oller: pintura y sociedad en el Caribe decimonónico” (Ph.D. dissertation, Complutense University of Madrid, 2019).