Femmes bavardant

This little scene of women talking together comes from the early 1790s, near the end of the years Goya spent designing lively everyday subjects for the royal tapestry works. It may never have been woven at all. One account ties it to three overdoor panels Goya painted for Sebastián Martínez, an art dealer in the southern port of Cádiz. That link matters, because it was in Martínez's house, around 1793, that Goya fell gravely ill and came out of it permanently deaf. The bright, chatty world of pictures like this one belongs to the Goya from before that illness. What he painted afterward grew darker and stranger. Here the mood is still easy, a few women passing the time in the open air.