Spanish school, follower of Francisco de Goya, XVIII century.

Spanish School; Circle of FRANCISCO DE GOYA (Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, 1746 - Bordeaux, France, 1828); 18th century.
"Picador".
Oil on canvas.
Preserves original canvas.
It has Spanish frame of the seventeenth century.
Measurements: 18.5 x 16 cm; 34.5 x 31 cm (frame).
This work shows a bullfighting theme, which places it in the long Spanish tradition of this type of scenes. The looseness of the brushstroke, the almost graphic strokes in some areas in clear contrast with other almost impressionistic areas, and these same marked strokes denote the great quality of the painter. The work can be related to the Spanish Romantic production and the painting of customs that was born as a way of interpreting a growing feeling of national consciousness, present in the middle class as it advanced towards social hegemony. To a certain extent, the painters' concern was to deepen the vision of their country through a language, that of painting, that everyone could understand, thus helping the common people to understand the nature and meaning of their nationality, especially as it had manifested itself in the recent past, still alive in the memory of the elders.
Returning to the technique, it is worth mentioning that the piece is heir to the painting of the master Goya. One of the most outstanding painters in the history of universal art, Francisco de Goya received his first drawing and painting lessons from José Luzán Martínez, who taught at his home and also at the Academy of Drawing founded in Zaragoza in 1754. After three years of studies with this teacher, Goya applied for a pension from the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1763, at the age of seventeen. It seems that by then he was already a student of Francisco Bayeu, who had returned from court. However, Goya did not manage to enter the Academy, nor when he tried again in 1766. Around 1770 he undertook a trip to Italy to broaden his training and improve his possibilities. There he would leave evidence of his early taste for the grotesque and the satirical. After a long career, Goya was replaced as Pintor de Cámara by Vicente López, and he entered a period of isolation, bitterness and illness that led him to seclude himself in the Quinta del Sordo, on the outskirts of Madrid, where he produced his supreme work: the Pinturas Negras (Black Paintings). Fed up with the absolutism imposed by Ferdinand VII in Spain, Goya finally left for France in 1824, where he met with exiled liberal friends. There he spent his last years and produced his final work, "The Milkmaid of Bordeaux", in which he anticipated impressionism. Today his work is part of the most important art galleries in the world, from the Prado Museum to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Louvre in Paris or the National Gallery in London.