Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

(Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, 1746 – Bordeaux, 1828)

Charles III of Spain in Hunting Costume

ca. 1787/88

oil on canvas

209 x 125 cm

Inv. no. 443

BBVA Collection Spain



Goya was received by the king for the first time in 1779, and we also know that the king visited the painter’s studio, as the artist recorded in his correspondence with Martín Zapater (1747-1803). However, between that date and the death of the king in 1787 there is no documentary evidence to confirm that Charles III posed for Goya. This would suggest that, for this painting, the artist must have worked from his own visual memory and from paintings or prints by other artists, for instance the official portrait of the monarch painted by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779).

Goya made just two portraits of this king: the one in which he is dressed in court costume (Banco de España) and the one in hunting costume with a dog sleeping at his feet.

The composition is directly inspired by Velázquez’s hunting portraits which Goya copied and etched during his early years in Madrid, especially those he painted for Torre de la Parada. The composition it self is very much in the style of Velázquez, with a diagonal arrangement in which the main figure is cut out against a landscape bathed in light, albeit with a different, clearer palette with blues and pinks reminiscent of the soft colouring of
cartoons.

As Julián Gallego pointed out, the main difference is to be noted in the posture of the king, which can be explained by the changing meaning attached to hunting. At the time of King Philip IV and Velázquez, hunting was primarily viewed as a preparatory exercise for warfare, while in the age of the enlightenment and Charles III it was seen more of a pastime, and that is why probably he is depicted resting his rifle on the ground.

There are two similar versions of this painting, one in the Prado museum and the other in the collection of the Duchess of Fernán Núñez; as well as another two copies of lesser quality in the City Council of Madrid and in the collection of Lord Margadale (United Kingdom).

The dating of the portrait is inconclusive and controversial. Xavier de Salas argued that this might in fact be the first of all the versions of the king in hunting garb made by Goya, believing it to be an early work in the output of the painter from Aragon. For Salas, the similarities of the face with the portrait of the king in a riding jacket in the work belonging to Banco de España for which payment is documented in 1787, only shows that it had been painted at an earlier date. Meanwhile, Sánchez Cantón considered the date of 1786-1787 more likely, as it reminded him of the cartoons for The Flowers Girls, or Spring and The Grape Harvest, or Autumn from that same year. Other experts believe it to be later, from around 1787-1788, closer to the time when his career as a fashionable portraitist among intellectual circles in Madrid took off.

The reddish preparation which has come to the surface at certain points, darkening the colouring of the flesh, the treatment of the landscape and the unpolished drawing, seem to confirm that it might be the artist’s first attempt at this portrait of the king as a hunter, given that in the other versions the preparation is not reddish nor does it darken the overall tonality.

In any case, some of Goya’s most personal attributes can be appreciated in this portrait in the treatment of the weather-beaten face, with marked wrinkles and a somewhat ironic gesture. The end result is an interesting interpretation that combines the personality of an enlightened man and lover of nature with that of a courtier.

Charles III’s passion for hunting was well known. Dressed in hunting garb and with a jovial expression on his face, he is resting his rifle on the ground during a break. His dog is curled up asleep by his feet, and we can see on its collar the inscription “REY N. Señor”. The king himself, wearing a dark three-peaked hat, is cut out against a very deep landscape in which one can see the Guadarrama sierra in the distance under a bright blue sky.

Charles III was the son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife Elisabeth Farnese. During his reign, in which he followed a policy of enlightened despotism, he introduced major reforms among which one ought to underscore the attempt to improve the Royal Treasury by issuing royal bonds—the first paper money—and the creation of the first state bank, the Banco de San Carlos. He also curbed the power of the church, limiting its acquisition of real estate and checking the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. In 1766 he had to face the Esquilache Riots, instigated by the nobility and the clergy against the innovations that he was trying to introduce into Spain.