Dogs and hunting gear

In 1775 Goya was 29 and had just moved to Madrid to take his first steady royal work: designing cartoons, the full-size painted models that weavers at the royal tapestry factory would copy in wool. This is one of that first batch, delivered that spring. The tapestries were meant to hang in a dining room used by the prince and princess who were heirs to the Spanish throne, so the subjects were hunting scenes, a favourite pastime of the court. Here there is no hunter at all, just two dogs on a leash beside a propped shotgun and a game bag. Goya was a keen hunter himself and kept his own dogs, and it shows in how alertly the animals are painted. He kept designing for this factory for nearly two decades, until a grave illness in 1793 left him deaf.