Circle of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Spanish School; Circle of FRANCISCO DE GOYA (Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, 1746 - Bordeaux, France, 1828).
"Manufacture of bullets".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Attached pigmentation report issued by ARTE-LAB.
Measurements: 13 x 18 cm; 14 x 19 cm (frame).
In this work two young men with tools can be appreciated, composition that arises from a bigger scene of greater dimensions: "The manufacture of bullets in the saw of Tardienta", that at the moment is in the Gallery of the royal collections of Madrid. As the Goya Foundation of Aragon points out, "Goya was called to Zaragoza in 1808 by José Palafox to examine the ruins of the city that had been ravaged by the French troops, and to be able to paint the "glories" of the Zaragozans in that place. A letter from the painter to José Munárriz confirms this trip to his homeland. From that visit to Saragossa, or perhaps from a later visit before the end of the War of Independence, two paintings on panel that form a pendant emerged. They are The Manufacture of Gunpowder and The Manufacture of Bullets.
Both became part of the royal collections when they were acquired by Ferdinand VII sometime after his return in 1814".

Aesthetically and technically the work is heir to the paintings 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.