Pigeons and Fowls

Goya's Pigeons and Fowls, dated tentatively to around 1750, may be among the earliest surviving canvases attributable to him, predating his formal training and surviving in a provincial collection in Buenos Aires. The Spanish bodegón tradition to which it belongs descended from Juan Sánchez Cotán's revolutionary still lifes of the early seventeenth century — those austere suspended vegetables and birds that transformed humble subject matter into metaphysical meditation. By Goya's youth, the tradition had evolved toward the more animated hunting still lifes associated with the Madrid school of Meléndez and the Madrid court. For the young Goya, still life offered a training ground for observation independent of the figure — studying light falling on feathers and flesh in ways that would eventually inform his treatment of costume and skin in portraiture. The Juan B. Castagnino Museum's holding of this early work reflects the extensive movement of Spanish paintings to Latin America through collectors and emigrants over two centuries.

The still life likely employs the low-viewpoint, close observation of the Spanish bodegón tradition, with the birds depicted with attention to feather textures and the cool light of a stone or wooden surface. The composition is probably spare and direct, characteristic of the Spanish still life idiom.