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Shown from the knees up, a cleanshaven, young man with pale, peachy skin leans on his right elbow, to our left, against a ledge and holds a black top hat in that hand in this vertical portrait painting. His body faces us and he looks slightly off to our left, as if just over our left shoulder, with dark eyes. He has a wide nose, his pale pink lips are closed, and he has the hint of a five o’clock shadow on his square jaw and cleft chin. Sideburns come down past his ears, and straight brown hair falls in long bangs over his forehead and around his eyes and ears. White cloth wraps around his neck and is tied in a knot at the base of his throat. His white vest is striped faintly with light blue. Over that, his gray jacket has a black collar at the back and wide, gray lapels that reach his shoulders. The jacket is fitted to his waist, where it is buttoned, and then flares out into the shadows at his knees. Silver buttons gleam in the light from our left, down that side of the jacket. His left fist, on our right, rests against his hip as he leans on his other elbow, presumably on a ledge or high table. He holds the black top hat in that hand so we see the crimson-red lining within. The dark background behind him is subtly streaked with brick and coffee brown.

Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol, c. 1803/1804

Francisco Goya

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 52

Leaning on a ledge, left hand on his hip, Bartolomé Sureda meets us with a doffed hat and relaxed gaze. He was Goya’s friend, which is why his pose looks informal and he seems approachable. Sureda was also a talented artist who taught Goya aquatint, a new method of printmaking that emphasized variations in tone rather than etched lines. Goya used this technique to create the subtle light and dark effects in his celebrated series of prints Los Caprichos (The Caprices). We can see a similar tonal change here: note the way light bathes Sureda’s upper half and casts his lower half in shadow. Goya’s companion portrait of Sureda’s wife, Thérèse Louise de Sureda, is also in our collection.

Dive deeper

This is one of Goya’s liveliest male portraits. The sitter’s relaxed stance reflects the painter’s intimate response to a friend, a young liberal whose disheveled hair and garb in the mode of revolutionary France speaks not only of his affinity for contemporary French fashion, but also of his sympathy for current French politics.

Goya’s life spanned a period of political upheaval and military turmoil. In the early years of the nineteenth century, before he witnessed the horror of the Peninsular wars, Goya welcomed the idea of a Napoleonic invasion, believing the ideals of the French revolution to be the only antidote to the abuses of the Spanish monarchy. Bartolomé Sureda was one of a group of like-minded liberal intellectuals.

A clever young industrialist, Sureda studied cotton spinning in England in order to introduce the technique into Spain. Later he went to France to learn the secrets of Sèvres porcelain manufacture and in 1802 became director of the Spanish royal porcelain factory at Buen Retiro. During the French invasion of Spain, Napoleon considered him so important to Spanish industry that he detained him in France.

Since this portrait predates many of the sitter’s illustrious achievements, Goya presented him, not as a brilliant industrialist, but simply as an urbane young man.

More information on this painting can be found in the National Gallery publication Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries (PDF).

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 119.7 x 79.3 cm (47 1/8 x 31 1/4 in.)

framed: 137.8 x 98.4 cm (54 1/4 x 38 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. P.H.B. Frelinghuysen in memory of her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer

Accession Number

1941.10.1

Artists / Makers

Francisco Goya (artist) Spanish, 1746 - 1828

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Detail Information

Provenance

Possibly Pedro Escat, Palma de Mallorca.[1] Sureda family, Madrid and Seville;[2] (Durand-Ruel et Cie, Paris and New York); purchased 28 September 1897 by Mr. and Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer [Henry Osborne Havemeyer, 1847-1907, and Louisine Waldron Elder, 1855-1929], New York;[3] by inheritance 1929 to their daughter, Mrs. Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen [née Adaline Havemeyer, 1884-1963], Morristown, New Jersey; gift 1941 to NGA.

[1] Escat's ownership is first mentioned by Charles Yriarte, Goya, sa biographie et le catalogue de l'oeuvre, Paris, 1867: 148, and subsequently is noted in Conde de la Viñaza, Goya, su tiempo, su vida, sus obras, Madrid, 1887: 263, n. 121.

[2] Janusz Gerij, a descendant of the Sureda family, wrote to the NGA that the family has photographs of both NGA 1941.10.1 and NGA 1942.3.1 that were taken about 1892 (letter of 13 May 1995, in NGA Department of Visual Services, copy in NGA curatorial files).

[3] Frances Weitzenhoffer, "The Creation of the Havemeyer Collection, 1875-1900," Ph.D. diss., The City University of New York, 1982: 265, cited in Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993: 222, 343 no. 291. Louisine E. Havemeyer, in Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector, New York, 1961: 136, recalls that "we bought...the pair of 'Sureda' portraits for less than fifty thousand [pesetas]." Mrs. Havemeyer inherited the collection after her husband's death in 1907.

Associated Names

Durand-Ruel et Cie
Escat, Pedro
Frelinghuysen, Peter H.B., Mrs.
Havemeyer, Henry Osborne
Havemeyer, Louisine Waldron
Sureda family

Exhibition History

1912: Loan Exhibition of Paintings by El Greco and Goya, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, 1912, no. 9.

1936: Francisco Goya, His Paintings, Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1936, no. 8.

1986: Goya: The Condesa de Chinchón and Other Paintings, Drawings and Prints from Spanish and American Private Collections and the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986-87, unpaginated brochure.

1988: Goya and the Spirit of the Enlightenment, Prado, Madrid; Museun of Fine Arts, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988-1989, no. 65.

1993: Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993, no. 291, pl. 10.

1994: Goya, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1994-1995, no. 27, repro.

1996: Goya 1746-1828, Museo del Prado, Madrid, 1996, no. 122, repro.

2001: Goya: La imagen de la mujer [Goya: Images of Women], Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-2002, not in cat. (shown only in Washington).

2010: Goya e il mondo moderno, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2010, no. 6, repro.

2015: Goya: The Portraits, National Gallery, London, 2015-2016, no. 41. repro.

Technical Summary

The painting is executed over a reddish brown ground of average thickness and is in very good condition except for small discolored retouches in the jacket and face and in the background. The paint is applied in a quick and assured manner; in many areas, the application is thin, allowing the ground color to show through the brushstrokes. The impastoed highlights still retain a good deal of the texture and were not flattened by the relining. The painting is close to its original size, having lost only the tacking edges.

Bibliography

1867: Yriarte, Charles. Goya, sa biographie et le caralogue de l'oeuvre. Paris, 1867: 148.

1887: Viñaza, Conde de la (Cipriano Muñoz y Manzano). Goya: su tiempo, su vida, sus obras. Madrid, 1887: 263, no. 120.

1902: Lafond, Paul. Goya. Paris, 1902: 138, no. 214.

1903: Loga, Valerian von. Francisco de Goya. Berlin, 1903: 204.

1908: Calvert, Albert. Goya: An Account of His Life and Works. London, 1908: 140, no. 237.

1916: Beruete y Moret, Aureliano de. Goya, pintor de retratos. Madrid, 1915: 174 (Also English ed. Translated by Selwyn Brinton. London, 1922: 208).

1924: Mayer, August L. Francisco de Goya. Munich, 1923. Translated by Robert West [pseud.]. London, 1924: 166, no. 427.

1928: Desparmet Fitz-Gerald, Xavier. L'oeuvre peint de Goya. 4 vols. Paris, 1928-1950: 2:220, no. 509, pl. 423.

1931: H.O. Havemeyer Collection: Catalogue of Paintings, Prints, Sculpture and Objects of Art. Portland, Maine, 1931: 313, repro. 312.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 251, repro. 212, as Don Bartolomé Sureda by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes.

1945: Cook 1945, 156-160, fig. 5.

1960: Evans, Grose. Spanish Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1960 (Booklet Number Ten in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 38, color repro.

1961: Havemeyer, Louisine W. Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector. New York, 1961: 136.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 321, repro.

1964: Trapier, Elizabeth du Gué. Goya and His Sitters. New York, 1964: 31-33, fig. 55.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 60, as Don Bartolomé Sureda.

1968: Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 14, 127, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 52, repro., as Don Bartolomé Sureda.

1970: Gassier, Pierrre, and Juliet Wilson. Vie et oeuvre de Francisco Goya. Paris, 1970: 158, repro. 198, no. 813. Translated by Christine Hauch and Juliet Wilson. New York, 1971.

1971: Gudiol y Ricart, José. Goya: 1746-1828; Biography, Analytical Study and Catalogue of His Paintings. Translated by Kenneth Lyons. 4 vols. New York, 1971: 1: 311, no. 533, fig. 839.

1974: de Angelis, Rita. L'opera pittorica completa di Goya. Milan, 1974: 119, no. 445, repro. in reverse color pl. 30.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 158, as Don Bartolomé Sureda.

1979: Salas, Xavier de. Goya. London, 1979: color repro. 95; 102, no. 378, repro.

1984: Camón Aznar, José. Francisco de Goya. 4 vols. Saragossa, 3: 159, color repro. 161.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 404, no. 576, color repro., as Son Bartolomé Sureda.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 183, repro., as Don Bartolome Sureda

1990: Brown, Jonathan, and Richard G. Mann. Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1990: 12-15, color repro. 13.

1992: National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 92, repro.

2000: Bartolomé Sureda (1769-1851): Arte e industria en la ilustración tardía. Exh. cat. Museo Municipal de Madrid, 2000: 183, repro. [not included in the exhibition].

2001: Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA II: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, 2001: 66-67, 209, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 268-269, no. 217, color repro.