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Label Text This vivid portrait, in glowing colors and simple forceful design, is a master-work of portraiture of Goya's best period and style; and we believe it ranks with the finest portraits of all time. Though there are few separate elements in the composition, each one has a special meaning for us today, which we shall be privileged to discover as we study the painting, and the life and other works of Goya. This is an ideal painting for our Center, because of its connotations: for its meaning in several art-related fields (music, literature: and international events of the period it represents,--such as the beginning of our United States of America): for its vitality which is ageless; for its representing the best qualities of both traditional and modern painting. Source: Bulletin, May 1953.
Exhibition History"The Kirsch Years 1936-1958," a testimonial exhibition assembled from the collections of the Des Moines Art Center and the University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln, Des Moines Art Center, Jan. 7 - Feb. 10, 1974 (Exhibited in Des Moines only)
Published ReferencesEugene Muntz, Collection Pacully, Société francaise d'éditions d'art, Paris, 1900, ill.

X. D. Fitz-Gerald, L'OEUVRE PEINT DE GOYA, 1928 - 1950, vol.II, no.475, Paris, p.188, pl. no.393

Eloise Spaeth, AMERICAN ART MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES - AN INTRODUCTION TO LOOKING, Harper & Brothers, N.Y., 1960, ref. pp.144-145

PICTURES ON EXHIBIT, Apr. 1953, ill.

DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. pp.75 & 76, b/w ill. p.76

QUICK NEWS WEEKLY, Mar. 30, 1953, p.47, ill.

August L. Mayer, FRANCESCO DE GOYA, Munich, 1923, no.271, p.191 (English edition, London, 1924, no.271, p.155)

DMAC BULLETIN, Apr. 1953, cover ill.

IOWAN MAGAZINE, Apr. - May, 1955, pp.44 & 45, ill.

LES ARTS, Apr. 1903, pp. 37 & 38, ill., also mentioned in American Section, p.XV

ART DIGEST, Apr. 1, 1953, p.11, ill.

THE NATHAN EMORY COFFIN COLLECTION, a portfolio of fifty selections from the collection, published in 1981 by the DMAC to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Nathan Emory Coffin, b/w ill.

ART NEWS, Mar. 1954, pp.38 & 39, ill.

Albert F. Calvert, GOYA, London and New York, 1908, no.115, p.134

COLLIERS YEAR BOOK 1953, New York, 1954, p.70, ill.

Valerian van Loga, FRANCESCO DE GOYA, Berlin, 1903, no.311, p.202

Pierre Gassier, FRANCESCO DE GOYA, Wurzburg, 1983, b/w ill. pl.114, p.183 (German Edition)

DES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER, June 4, 1972, ill.

AN UNCOMMON VISION: THE DES MOINES ART CENTER, Des Moines Art Center, 1998, ref. pp.32, 33 & 124, b/w ill. p.124, color ill. p.125

Pedro Tedde de Lorca, EL BANCO DE SAN CARLOS, Alianza Editorial, S. A. Madrid, 1988, color ill.

Bernard S. Myers, ed., THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PAINTING, Third revised edition, N.Y., 1970, ill. p.210

DMAC News, Nov./Dec. 1994, p.2

Hugh Stokes, FRANCESCO GOYA, N.Y., 1914, pp.249, 250 & 276

A. de Beruete y Moret, GOYA AS A PORTRAIT PAINTER, London, 1922, no.276, p.215, ref. pp. 163 & 164

DES MOINES REGISTER, Feb. 20, 1971, ill.

Paul Lafond, GOYA, Paris, 1902, no.182, p.135, ill. opposite p.72, ref. pp.63 & 69
DimensionsFrame: 93 1/8 × 60 3/4 × 4 1/4 in. (236.5 × 154.3 × 10.8 cm)
Image (visible): 80 7/8 × 48 1/4 in. (205.4 × 122.6 cm)
Accession Number 1953.15
Classificationspainting
CopyrightPublic Domain
ProvenanceFamily of Don Mañuel Garcia de la Prada , Madrid [commissioned from the artist]; Collection Ruiz y Prado, Madrid/Collection della Prada [acquired from the previous]; M. Émile Pacully, Paris [acquired by 1900]; (Collection Émile Pacully, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 4, 1903, lot no. 50); John and Anna Jaffe, Nice [acquired by 1934]; (Sold by Vichy-French government at forced sale, Hall du Savoy, Nice, July 12-13, 1943, lot no. 141); Galerie Raphaël Gérard, Roger Dequoy, Jean Dutey, Paris [purchased from the previous, 1943]; Wilhelm Grosshennig/Gerstenberger Gallery, Leipzig/Chemnitz, Germany [purchased from the previous, June 1944]; Special Commission Linz, Munich [purchased from the previous]; Central Collecting Point, Munich [arrived 14 August 1945 departed for Paris 25 June 1946]. Gustave Cohen, France [restituted to the heirs of John and Anna Jaffe; Gustave Cohen, Paul Gluge, Théophile Gluge, and Alice Heymann, 1951]; Knoedler & Co [purchased from the Jaffé heirs through the previous, 1952]; Des Moines Art Center [purchased from the previous, 1953]

Images (1)

Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines

Audio (1)

Audio Transcript

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746 – 1828)
Don Mañuel Garcia de la Prada, c. 1805-1808

Run Time: 4:51
Recorded by Juliet Wilson-Bareau, independent researcher

My name is Juliet Wilson-Bareau. I am an independent researcher. I’ve been working on the life and times and works of Francisco Goya for very many years now and I’m particularly interested in his paintings, of all periods. We are looking at Francisco Goya’s portrait of Manuel Garcia de la Prada. We think that it was painted some where between 1805 and 1808.

Garcia de la Prada was in his 30s when the portrait was painted. Garcia de la Prada was a very lively, active fellow. He was a banker. He was given very high appointments in Madrid at around this time. In 1800, he was given a court appointment and looked after all kinds of commercial interests for the court. And in 1811, under the French government of Spain, Garcia de la Prada became, effectively, the mayor of Madrid and he was very active in running the country. And this went on until General Wellington came in and finally drove the French armies out of Spain. And then he, as a sympathizer with the French, of course, had to leave in a hurry.

The painting is really one of his most ambitious male portraits. And it’s very striking that one can compare it with some of Goya’s portraits of some of the highest, highest-ranking aristocrats in Spain. And yet Garcia de la Prada is a bourgeoisie man, a working man, extremely intelligent, and forceful, but not a man with pretensions to aristocracy. And I think one of the things that must have endeared him to Goya, was his obvious passion for this little dog—a little bitch in fact—very clearly painted, showing that she is a female dog. And Goya was a great lover of animals. He was passionately addicted to hunting himself, and always had hunting dogs attached to him. [He] Made many drawings and even some paintings of dogs. And I think that he had very special relationship with this lovely little pug dog.

We presume that he is pictured, although he was probably painted in Goya’s studio—that he is pictured as if he were in his own home, with his dog, which is placed on a very handsome piece of furniture. And beside him is this very plain, rush-seated chair, ladderback, which was actually an item of furniture that is found in many, many of Goya’s portraits, not this particular one, that was probably Garcia de la Prada’s own chair—maybe he brought it with him to the studio. But in many of Goya’s portraits from the 1790s and 1800s, we see often quite wealthy-looking, extremely well-dressed gentlemen either sitting on or standing against this kind of very simple, almost poor you could say, sort of chair. But it is a chair that was much in use in Spain at the time.

The painting must have been absolutely magnificent at the time that Goya painted it. There are quite a number of portraits, where you see very elegant gentlemen in yellow breeches of this kind, which might be of perhaps a velvet or of satin. In the case of this portrait, it has at sometime in its life been rather harshly cleaned. And it is difficult to read the quality of the kind of material from which the clothes are actually made. But nevertheless, they are striking. They still describe the shape and the shapely legs of the sitter very well. And it is hoped, in fact, that this picture can go through some sort of conservation process, and be enhanced. Because one of the things that one notices is that the top hat on the chair doesn’t actually sit down on the chair. It seems to be sort of levitating, almost floating, above the rush-seated area of the chair. And this is probably because some glazing and shadows—transparent shadows—were removed in a cleaning process, probably many, many years ago.

Don Mañuel Garcia de la Prada
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
date unknown
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
ca. 1816