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The Wife of Ceán Bermúdez Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

Subtitle

Manuela Camas y de las Heras

Artist

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes Fuendetodos, 1746 – Bordeaux, 1828

Culture Spanish
Date ca. 1785
Object type painting
Medium, technique oil on canvas
Dimensions

121 x 84.5 cm
with frame: 152 × 116 × 8.5 cm

Inventory number 3792
Collection Old Master Paintings
On view Museum of Fine Arts, Second Floor, European Art 1700-1850, Gallery XXVIII

Goya, who covered an enormous distance from the acceptance of Rococo conventions to the attaining of the inner independence of the modern artist, painted this portrait of his friend’s wife in the first half of the 1790s. The husband, Ceán Bermúdez, exerted significant academic work: his encyclopedia, published in 1800, is still an indispensable manual of Spanish history of art. The intelligent smile and warm glance of Seńora Bermúdez arouse in the viewer the same affection, which the painter harboured for his sitter. Goya depicts the dress decorated with ribbons and tulle ruffles, and the red velvet needlework box casting a reflex on her hands with a fresh painterly style which remind us of Manet’s works painted decades later.

Vilmos Tátrai

References

Pigler, Andor, Katalog der Galerie Alter Meister, 1-2. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest. 2, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1967, p. 279-80.

Nyerges, Éva, Spanish Paintings, A Szépművészeti Múzeum gyűjteményei/The Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2008, p. 194-195, no. 90.

This record is subject to revision due to ongoing research.

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