Still Life with Fruit (with scorpion and frog)

Still Life with Fruit (with Scorpion and Frog) (1874) is an oil-on-canvas still life by the Mexican painter Hermenegildo Bustos (1832–1907), held at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City under inventory number 21758. Bustos painted most of his work on copper, which demands fine brushwork, so this canvas stands apart from the rest of his output. Its palette is brighter and more varied than his copper pieces, and the museum notes that it pairs with his Still Life with Pineapple of 1877. The composition is arranged in receding rows, as if the produce sat on shelves against a pale ground. A frog sits in the upper left corner, its gaze turned outward, and a small scorpion, tail curled, cuts diagonally between the rows. Around them are vegetables and fruit at different stages of ripeness: two green chiles, a half tomato, apricots, a prickly pear, a half watermelon, a pomegranate split to show its seeds, a papaya with a wedge removed, an avocado, a banana, and a sliced pear. Several items are cut or partly eaten, so the interiors show as well as the skins. The Brooklyn Rail reads the frog and scorpion as adding a note of menace to an otherwise orderly catalogue, and that tension is what makes the picture hold attention. The fruit reads as a record of the regional produce of Bustos's community, while the animals suggest the threats and hidden life beneath a harvest. The paint is smooth and even, with the cracked surface of the ground adding age to the image.