Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol
Francisco Goya·c. 1803/1804
Historical Context
Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol, painted around 1803–1804 and held at the National Gallery of Art, is a portrait of a young industrialist and inventor who directed the royal porcelain factory at Buen Retiro. The portrait’s bold, confident execution—the dark costume, the direct gaze, the minimal background—demonstrates Goya’s ability to create compelling character studies with remarkable economy. Sureda was a friend of Goya’s, and the portrait’s informal quality suggests the warmth of their personal relationship. This painting forms a pendant with the portrait of Sureda’s wife Thérèse Louise, also in the NGA collection.
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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