Portrait de Mariano Goya, petit-fils de l'artiste

In the summer of 1827 Goya was 81, deaf, and living out his last years as a voluntary exile in Bordeaux. He made one more difficult journey back to Madrid, and while there painted his grandson Mariano, then not quite 21 and his only surviving grandchild. On the back of the canvas he wrote in thin, watery paint that this was Goya to his grandson, at 81 years of age. He had long set aside part of his pension for the young man. The portrait shows a poised, fashionable figure in a high collar, done with the loose, sparing touch of an old hand. Goya went back to Bordeaux and died there the following spring.