Still Life with Citrus Fruit and Nuts

This painting portrays fruits, nuts, wrapped sweets and their boxes together with a jar, distributed informally on a ledge. Their surfaces and textures are subtly differentiated and intensely illuminated to acquire a revelatory quality. As in much Spanish art, the visible world becomes a means of exploring the super-sensory. The painting was part of a collection of 117 works belonging to the industrialist and engineer F.D. Lycett Green and bequeathed to York through the Art Fund, in 1955, in recognition of the remarkable efforts made after the Second World War by its curator to transform it into a gallery of international importance.