Juan de Arellano was the first Spanish artist to make a speciality of the genre of flower still life painting. In doing so, he responded less to the examples of his Spanish predecessors than to those afforded by flower paintings by Europe's most renowned specialists, who by the mid 17th Century were well represented in the royal and aristocratic collections of Madrid. Like the other great painters of the century, notably Van der Hamen and Pereda, he created a style that was uniquely his and thus places him among the most important European specialists. A successful businessman, he appears to have organised an efficient workshop that produced highly decorative works, many of them signed and of a consistently high quality. Arellano contributed as much as any artist to giving Baroque Madrid an oppulence that helped to relieve the austerity of its Habsburg heritage.

In his biography of Arellano, Antonio Palomino tells us that the artist studied with the Madrid painter Juan de Solis and that, after trying to make a career as a figure painter, he reached the age of 36 without having achieved distinction or success of any kind. Palomino states that, having realised that he could not make his mark as a figure painter in Madrid, he tried copying some flower paintings by the Roman specialist Mario Nuzzi (1603-1673), thus discovering his natural gift for the genre. But even before this, he seems to have been influenced by the style of Flemish painters, notably Daniel Seghers, known in Spain as 'El Teatino', so it was with both these influences that Arellano forged his own mature and individual style.

Arellano's earliest known flower paintings date from the mid 1640's and by the early 1650's he had achieved an extraordinary level of competence. In 'Festoon of Flowers with Cartouche surrounding a Landscape', one of a pair of paintings in the Museo del Prado, he has adopted a format, as well the incisive draughtmanship familiar with Daniel Seghers. With its polished surface and fine resolution of detail, this work from Arellano's early maturity seems to reflect the interest in botany that typifies much of Northern flower painting. However by the late 1650's this sensibility was replaced by a more sensuous and decorative manner that was more Italianate.

The apogee of Arellano's career occurred in the 1660's and 1670's. By then he had developed a wide-ranging repertoire of compositions and sizes that reflected an evident craze for flower pictures among Madrid's gentry. Although he painted overdoors, garlands, and sprays tied with ribbons, he mostly painted bouquets. These were often produced in pairs, depicting a limited range of flower species arranged in bulbous glass vases, decorated metal urns or open-work baskets. In his later pictures the meticulous technique and even light of the earlier works have been replaced by a broad painterly facture and strongly contrasted light and shade that emphasise form over detail. The fluent manner of these works allows little room for the botanical particulars of his early works. The emphasis instead is on immediacy and grace, and on the decorative impact of the whole. Often it seems as if a breeze is ruffling through the petals and leaves.

In the early 1670's, Arellano painted a number of large compositions depicting baskets of flowers that are among his most ambitious works. Several series of these seem to have existed. From one of them seven known examples survive, all nearly the same size, with identical open-work baskets containing a profusion of flowers, as though they had just been picked from a garden and awaited arranging in vases. Very likely these monumental flowerpieces were intended as overdoor or overwindow decorations in a single grand room in one of Madrid's noble mansions.

His major pupils were Bartolomé Perez who later became his son-in-law, as well as his own son José.

Museums where examples of the artist's work can be found include:

Blois, Lille, Madrid (Prado), Narbonne, Paris (Louvre) and Rennes