Dead Duck

Goya painted this while Spain was at war with Napoleon's army. Between 1808 and 1812, in the same years he was cutting the Disasters of War plates that he never published, he made about a dozen small still lifes with no commission behind them. They were still in his house in 1812, when an inventory of his possessions was drawn up after the death of his wife, Josefa Bayeu, and they stayed with his family for decades. Dead game was an old subject and usually a boast about the hunt. Goya left the hunt out. The duck lies alone with its head on a curved surface and one wing slightly raised and stiff, its body built from short strokes while the ground behind it is swept on broadly. He signed the picture by writing Goya diagonally across that empty background.