Le Chat pourchassé

Goya painted this small study of a cat in 1788. Cats appear more than once across his work, and he had watched them closely since a sketchbook he kept as a young man traveling in Italy. Here a single animal is shown cornered and tense, hemmed in with nowhere to go. It is a modest subject next to the royal portraits that would soon dominate his career, made in the year the old king, Charles III, died and his weaker son Charles IV came to the throne, a change that would gradually draw Goya closer to the center of the court.