The Poor at the Fountain

Goya painted this to be turned into a tapestry, one of a set meant to hang in the dining room of the future king of Spain at El Pardo, the royal palace just outside Madrid. A mother stands at a fountain in the dead of winter with two small children. One boy holds his hands inside his jacket to keep them from freezing. Goya had spent years designing cheerful scenes of picnics and games for the court; here, around 1786, the tone cools. The palette turns grey and cold and the landscape is bare. The name came later: Gregorio Cruzada Villaamil, cataloguing the cartoons in 1870, called it The Poor at the Fountain, though nothing in the picture says the family is poor, and the woman's buckled shoes point the other way. It was still meant to be woven in wool and mounted on a palace wall, where royal children took their meals.