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In the summer of 1786 Goya was appointed painter to the Spanish king, and this was among his first jobs in the new post, a design for a tapestry to hang in the royal dining room at the El Pardo palace. The king had asked for pleasant, light subjects, so Goya gave him autumn as a country idyll. A well-dressed young couple pauses on a rise, the man holding up a bunch of dark grapes, while a small boy reaches for them and a peasant woman waits with a full basket. This is Goya well before the deafness and the darkness, painting a Spain of easy afternoons. The whole scene is built as a neat pyramid of four figures set against a soft, pale sky.