Francisco de Goya, 'Don Andrés del Peral', before 1798

Andrés del Peral sits proudly on a simple chair and looks out at us with a penetrating stare. This is an intimate portrait and Goya shows Peral as he really was, with a receding hairline and grey hair. He looks as if he’s sneering at us, but his facial droop suggests he may have suffered a stroke. He places his left hand on his hip and the right is tucked into his waistcoat, a gesture commonly found in portraiture at this date.

A friend and contemporary of Goya, Peral was an accomplished gilder – like Goya’s father – and he worked in that capacity for the royal court in Madrid from the late 1770s to the early 1820s. Peral was a collector and he even owned a few small paintings by Goya of bullfighting and genre scenes. In 1798 the two of them were employed – as gilder and court painter respectively – in decorating the royal chapel of San Antonio de la Florida, on the outskirts of Madrid. Goya was commissioned to paint frescoes and Peral to gild the altars and frames.

This portrait probably dates from that time, and may have been intended as a gift for Peral. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid in summer 1798, where it was highly praised for its sense of immediacy. In a review in the Diario de Madrid an anonymous art critic wrote that this portrait ‘would be enough by itself to bring credit to a whole Academy, to a whole nation, to a whole contemporary period with respect to prosperity, so sure is its draughtsmanship, its taste in colouring, its freedom...’.

Goya’s use of colour is subtle and delicate, his brushstrokes confident and at times even flamboyant. Our eye is drawn to the luxurious sheen of Peral’s silvery coat, and the striped waistcoat decorated with flowers beneath it. The coat is thinly painted, and Goya allows the brown priming to show through in places to convey the texture of the cloth’s shimmering surface. The flowers on his waistcoat are painted with swift strokes of blue pushed into the still wet paint of the fabric.

Goya’s masterful painting technique and his very truthful representation of Peral make this one of his most memorable portraits.