The Water Bearer

Goya painted this during the years Spain was fighting Napoleon's armies, roughly 1808 to 1812, and it has a companion, a knife grinder, made to hang beside it. Read together they seem to honor ordinary people caught up in the war, the man sharpening blades for fighters who often had nothing better, and this young woman hauling water, the kind who carried it to men at the barricades. She is seen from below against a bare, almost abstract ground, her jug on her hip, her face turned up and lit, monumental for someone so plainly dressed. The two canvases left Spain early, and today the water bearer hangs in Budapest, in the old Esterhazy collection.