The Drinker

In 1777 Goya was 31 and a long way from the dark, haunted work of his old age. He was designing cartoons, full-size painted models, for the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid, which wove them into hangings for the royal palaces. This one was meant to sit above a door in the dining room of the prince and princess of Asturias at El Pardo, which is why the drinker is seen from below, his figure rising against an open blue sky. He tips back a Catalan wineskin while companions loll around him. The subject carries an old moralising note about the fleeting pleasures of drink, but Goya plays it lightly, as a scene of ordinary Madrid life. It belongs to a series of tapestry cartoons he turned out through the late 1770s, his first steady work for the crown.