Follower of Francisco de Goya

Follower of FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES; Spain, XIX century.
"Portrait of the Count of Fernán Núñez".
Oil on canvas.
It has slight flaws and dirt on the pictorial surface.
Presents heritage labels on the back.
Measurements: 40 x 27 cm; 56 x 42 cm (frame).
This work reproduces the portrait painted by Goya of the Count of Fernán Núñez in 1803, which is currently in the Fernán Núnez Palace in Madrid. The deliberate coarseness with which this male personage has been portrayed and the use of a chromatic range based on black and ochre and red tones are very reminiscent of Goya's black paintings and his monarchical portraits. 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.