London exhibition shows Goya as portraitist of honesty and insight
National Gallery show reappraises Goya's status as one of the great portrait painters in art history, curator says
Spanish artist Francisco Goya, best known now for depicting the horrors of war, was celebrated in his time as a great portrait painter for royalty and aristocrats, generals and despots, politicians and friends.
A new exhibition at London's National Gallery brings together about 70 portraits spanning nearly 50 years that show how Goya painted with great honesty, never "prettifying" his subjects, achieving great intimacy as a result.
Born in Fuendetodos in Aragon in 1746, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes lived through tumultuous times, including the peninsular war and French occupation of Spain, which gave his work what National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi called its "searing vision".
Curator Xavier Bray says the exhibition reappraised Goya's status as one of the great portrait painters in art history.
"His innovative and unconventional approach took the art of portraiture to new heights through his ability to reveal the inner life of his sitters, even in his grandest and most memorable formal portraits," he says.
The Prado Museum in Madrid contributed 10 portraits, while others came from the Navarran city of Pamplona and as far away as Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some are from the private collections of the families of the original sitters and have been never been exhibited before.
A highlight is his 1797 portrait of the Duchess of Alba, a rare loan from the Hispanic Society of America in New York. A famous beauty and wealthy widow, she was a close friend and patron of Goya with a reputation as an eccentric.
