Portrait of Antonio de Porcel

Goya painted this in 1806, when Antonio Porcel was a well-connected official in Madrid and Goya was first painter to the Spanish court, two years before Napoleon's armies marched in and turned the country to war. It is a hunting portrait. Porcel sits with his legs crossed, a shotgun in one hand, his other resting on the head of his dog as the animal looks up at him, dressed for the field rather than the palace. Goya signed it as a gift, inscribing that it was made by his friend. The picture hung for generations in Argentina, at the Jockey Club in Buenos Aires. In 1953 a fire swept through the building and destroyed it, so everything we know of it now comes from photographs taken before the flames.