Garden View with a Dog

Among the wide range of still-life and flower painting formats that Tom�s Hiepes developed were garden scenes, showing figures and animals in the corner of a garden courtyard. The setting of this painting with cultivated flowers in pots in the corner of a paved garden, and with its distinctive tiled bench, appears in other paintings by Hiepes and suggests that it represents a corner of a real garden in Valencia, perhaps his own. Hiepes appears to have been alone among Spanish flower painters in representing flowers growing in such pots. It is likely that this format was his own invention, possibly arrived at in response to his own particular circumstances in Valencia, a city famous in the 17th century for its gardens, flowers and fruits.