Escena invernal

In the summer of 1786 Goya finally got the post he had been angling for, painter to the king, with a salary attached. That autumn he had to show the court what he proposed to put in the dining room of the prince and princess at the Pardo palace outside Madrid, and this small canvas is one of those proposals, painted quickly so it could be looked at and approved. What he offered them was a group of labourers pushing along a frozen road in a blizzard, one party hauling a slaughtered pig. The full-size version went to the royal tapestry works and hung as Winter. The Duke and Duchess of Osuna bought this sketch at the end of the 1790s, and it reached Chicago by bequest in 1990.