Pigeons and Fowls

Goya's Pigeons and Fowls, from around 1750, is an early still life that predates the identification of his mature personal style. Still life was not Goya's primary genre, and works of this type from his early career show his absorption of the Spanish and Dutch-Flemish still life tradition before he found the subjects — portraiture, social satire, war, and the nocturnal imagination — that would make him one of the greatest painters in European history. The humble subject of domestic birds belongs to the Spanish bodegón tradition that descended from seventeenth-century masters like Sánchez Cotán.

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.