Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol
Francisco Goya·c. 1803/1804
Historical Context
Goya's portrait of Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol from around 1803–04, at the National Gallery of Art, depicts a remarkable figure of the Spanish Enlightenment: an inventor and industrialist who had travelled to England and France to learn advanced manufacturing techniques before returning to Spain to direct the royal porcelain factory at Buen Retiro. Sureda's friendship with Goya represented a connection between the artistic and technological avant-gardes of Napoleonic-era Spain, and the portrait's informal confidence — the sitter's relaxed posture, the dark costume against a near-empty ground — belongs to the modern portrait manner that Goya developed in contrast to the more elaborate conventions of formal court portraiture. The pendant portrait of Sureda's wife Thérèse Louise, also in the NGA collection, completes a pair that together document Goya's ability to differentiate psychological character between husband and wife through subtle compositional and chromatic contrasts. The National Gallery of Art's holding of both pendants makes it the only institution outside the Prado with comparable depth in Goya's mature portraiture.
Technical Analysis
Goya's oil on canvas shows his bold, direct approach to portraiture, with the sitter's face emerging from shadow through broad, confident brushstrokes and a limited palette of blacks, whites, and warm flesh tones.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the dark costume and minimal background: Goya's portrait of his friend Sureda is stripped of all social display in favor of direct personal encounter.
- ◆Look at the bold, confident brushwork: the face is established through decisive strokes that achieve likeness and presence simultaneously without overworking the surface.
- ◆Observe the informal warmth that distinguishes portraits of friends from commissioned likenesses: Sureda's relaxed confidence suggests a sitter entirely comfortable with his portraitist.
- ◆Find the pendant relationship with Thérèse Louise's portrait in the same collection: the complementary compositions show Goya thinking about the pair as a single artistic statement.
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.
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