Portrait painting is a seriously commercial undertaking. The painter, if further business is to be obtained, must satisfy the commissioner with a likeness, more or less laced with flattery, and be sufficiently distinctive as to attract custom from others so inclined. Consequently the clothes of the sitter which record for posterity status and wealth are far more important than facial appearance. Ugly persons clad in magnificent clothes, portrayed with uncomfortable honesty, are a feature of Spanish portraiture, and Goya was no exception in this respect.

Not since the exhibition Goya and his Times at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1963/64 has there been an opportunity to see such a superb display of works by him as in Goya: The Portraits on show at the National Gallery, London (7 October 2015 – 10 January 2016). It is the first time that an exhibition in Britain has been devoted solely to his portraits and from the moment of entering the first gallery one is swept up by the powerful presence of the great variety of sitters who span most stages of his life. The exhibition sets out to document his career as a portrait painter and to demonstrate how each portrait tells us something, not only about the sitter, but also about Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) himself, an artist who lived through times of momentous changes straddling two centuries.

A brooding Self-Portrait from c.1780 (Museo Goya, Colección Ibercaja, Zaragoza), informal but with a confident and serious expression, introduces the exhibition. His brightly lit head, softly glows out from a dark background. Already a successful painter he had been trained by Francisco Bayeu (1734-95), whose daughter Josefa he had married in 1773. Two years later he was summoned to Madrid by Charles III’s First Court Painter, Anton Raphael Mengs, to paint tapestry cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory, and was elected in 1780 to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Ferdinando. The success of the altarpiece painted by Goya for the newly-built church of San Francisco el Grande in Madrid (1783) encouraged Count Floridablanca, Charles III’s Prime Minister, to commission from him a full-length portrait. Goya’s career as a portrait painter consequently began at the relatively late age of 37, but confronted by this image of the powerful minister, his red coat and breeches contrasted with his sparkling white waistcoat and blue watered silk sash, and his spectacles thrust out, the onlooker is dominated by his piercing eyes. From the shadows to the left, the artist presents him with a small canvas for approval, while the minister’s secretary peers out hesitantly from behind his right shoulder. Behind both is the lower part of an oval portrait of Charles III, upon whose patronage the minister depended, while on the floor, as if at the young artist’s feet, is a notebook inscribed “Senor/Fran.co Goya”. This doubles up as a signature, subtly reinforcing the newly-achieved social status of the artist, while leading the observer’s eye inwards to the minister. Nonetheless, this is spatially an uncomfortable, unconvincing composition.

It may have been as a result of the success of this portrait that Goya received an introduction to the Infante Don Luis de Borbón, who had been destined for the church but was never ordained and had little interest in church matters. Highly cultivated and famous for his scandalous love affairs, he was ordered by Charles III  to marry a lady of lesser nobility and live away from the Court at Arenas de San Pedro, in order to protect his own son’s claim to the throne. Goya’s portraits of The Infante Don Luis de Borbón (1783, private collection), his wife Maria Tereza de Vallabriga y Roza (1783, Colección Pérez Simón), and of their son Luis Maria de Vallabriga (1783, Museo Zaragoza), painted during his first stay at Arenas de San Pedro in 1783, are displayed together with his large conversation piece of the Family of the Infante Don Luis (1783-84, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Parma). Set in a darkened room lit by a candle placed on a card table, the seated Don Luis, now an old man, is shown in profile playing cards. His wife, in a white peignoir and having her hair brushed, is the focal point of the composition and placed in the exact centre, a characteristic of Spanish painting. They are surrounded on both sides by their children and members of their household, each individually characterised and painted in half-light and warm tones reminiscent of Rembrandt, for whom Goya had a profound admiration. What is fascinating is his inclusion of himself on the left, seen from behind and seated beside a large canvas, holding a palette and brushes and turning to observe the group, a compositional device which immediately echoes Velazquez’s Las Meninas (c.1656, Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid). It is well known that Goya made etchings from the paintings of Velazquez in the Royal Collection, published in 1778, and perhaps saw himself as the Infante’s court painter in the role that Velazquez had played to Philip IV. Goya later described his early training with Don José Luzán in Zaragoza where he had been set to copy the best prints in the studio. In this great conversation piece there are echoes of Hogarth and, perhaps, the candle-lit lit scenes by Joseph Wright of Derby such as An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump  (1768, National Gallery, London). Nevertheless, it remains a strange picture with the space ill-defined. Some of the figures still defy identification and the finished painting, probably completed in Madrid, was never framed and hung in Arenas de San Pedro.

Goya’s continuing debt to Velazquez is clear in the portrait of Charles III in Hunting Dress (1786-88, Duchess of Arco). Although not painted from life, and known in five versions, this striking image is Goya’s first royal portrait. Renowned for his love of hunting, a passion shared by Goya, Charles is depicted in an extensive landscape grasping his gun with his dog curled up at his feet. In 1786 Goya was appointed a Painter to the King and his success led to many portrait commissions from both the aristocracy and the “new generation of statesmen”, in which his originality and painting bravura became ever more apparent.

In 1787 The National Bank of San Carlos commissioned Goya to paint a series of portraits of its Directors. The pose of Velazquez’s Pablo de Valladolid (c.1635, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) appears to have served as a model for his portrait of Count Cabarrús (1788, Colección Banca de Espana), a brilliant financier, economist and one of the illustrados. What is striking and perhaps novel is that he boldly paints Cabarrús’s solid figure clad in yellow and green shot silk, lined with fur, with his rather small head thrown into relief by the dark undefined background.  His portrait of The Count of Altamira  (1787, Colección Banca de Espana), another Director of the National Bank, shows the Count, decidedly small in stature, seated on a yellow silk upholstered chair, one arm resting on a yellow draped table. A determined character, his head is carefully observed, likewise his clothes with delicate embroidered rococo decoration in gold applied to his dark blue coat and red waistcoat. His right hand is hidden by his sash of blue watered silk, but his body does not really sit on the chair suggesting the use of a lay figure. In Goya’s portrait of Altamira’s wife and his daughter, Maria Augustina, here seated on a pale blue upholstered settee which almost becomes lost in the pale brown shadows of the background, one can appreciate the sheer delicacy and brilliance of the painting of her pink dress. The child’s diaphanous pale grey miniature adult dress and tiny protruding feet endow the heads of both mother and child with doll-like rigidity. Goya usually had a great rapport with children and one of his most celebrated examples is the portrait of Count Altamira’s youngest son, Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga  (1788, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). This innocent looking child in a bright red costume with a white sash stands delicately holding a string attached to his pet magpie in whose beak is Goya’s trade card. From the shadows behind they are watched by three menacing cats with large eyes which hint at the kind of fearsome creatures which were later to emerge in Los Caprichos (1797-98 and published 1799) while, on the right, is a green-painted bird cage containing goldfinches, captives but in relative safety.

Children also feature in the large portrait of The Duke and Duchess of Osuna and their Children (1788, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The Duke, dressed in dark blue trimmed with silver, presents his wife and four small children as a group unified by their pale greys (females) and greens (males), lightly and delicately brushed. Each child holds a toy, and they look out with large eyes as if surprised. This refinement of the painting of clothes reaches a high point in the three-quarter-length portrait of The Countess-Duchess of Benavente (1785, private collection), stiffly erect and wearing the latest Paris fashion. Her elaborately coiffed grey hair is crowned by a magnificent hat trimmed with pink ribbons, flowers and feathers matching the prominent pink bow that adorns her bust. Her shimmering blue silk dress, is framed by her overdress embroidered with sprays of flowers and ribbons. As Duchess of Osuna she was one of Goya’s patrons commissioning, with her husband, in 1798, Six Scenes of Witchcraft. In contrast, the superb portrait of The Duke of Osuna (1795/98, The Frick Collection, New York), now portly, reveals Goya painting with a new realism increasingly removed from the Rococo and 18^th-century sensibility. We are in the presence of this proud man, fashionably dressed wearing a blue-grey coat with a high collar and wide folded back lapels over a white waistcoat and cravat, all very freely painted. His warm ruddy face and mouth slightly open exude friendship and confidence.

In the ten years between painting the Osuna family group and his portrait of the Duke alone major events had taken place in Spain and in Goya’s life. Charles III had died and his son, Charles IV, had been crowned in 1789, the year of the French Revolution which was to have such a profound impact on the monarchies of Europe. Goya had been promoted to Court Painter and in 1792 he had suffered a terrible illness which resulted in his becoming deaf. Cared for in Cádiz by Sebastián Martínez, he returned to Madrid in 1793 and started to paint a series of small cabinet pictures of subjects which he said could not usually be addressed in commissioned work. In his so-called Self Portrait before an Easel  (c.1792-95, Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid) the painter is depicted in his studio silhouetted against the light from a window behind and in the act of painting a large picture, revealing no hint of his illness. He wears tight trousers and a short jacket but of particular interest is his hat equipped with metal candle holders, a device not unknown amongst artists enabling them to paint at night. In contrast, the small Self Portrait  (1795-97, Metropolitan Museum, New York) executed in brush and grey wash, reveals a sad brooding Goya curiously reminiscent of his contemporary Beethoven also cut off by deafness. Close in style is a third and tiny Self Portrait at an Easel (1796-97, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) which shows the same intense scrutiny of himself and it was possibly a gift from the artist to the Duchess of Alba. These are difficult to reconcile with the Self Portrait before an Easel.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is Goya’s formidable portrait of The Duchess of Alba (1797, The Hispanic Society of America, New York). Goya had visited the widowed Duchess in 1786 and early months of 1787 and this is the second-full-length portrait he painted of her. She stands in a landscape in a black lace dress with a red sash and black lace mantilla and stares out of the canvas pointing imperiously at the inscription in the sand ‘Only Goya’. This can be interpreted as a statement that this painting was executed without studio assistance. The two rings on her fingers bear their two names, the significance of which has been is variously interpreted.

Goya’s portraits of the 1790s, many of which represent his friends, reveal an ever more direct and close understanding of the sitter. For example, in his portrait of Gasper Melchor de Jovellanos (1798, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), Minister of Justice, one of the leading intellectuals of the Spanish Enlightenment, and a friend of Goya, he is painted seated, his elbow on a sheaf of papers on an elaborate gilt bureau plat. Exhibiting an extremely pensive gaze, he holds a folded letter inscribed “Jovellanos/por/Goya”. He has been interpreted as representing the ‘vita contemplativa’ and melancholia with echoes of Goya’s famous plate from the Caprichos, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. In contrast, the portrait hung alongside it, of Francisco de Saavedra  (1798, Courtauld Gallery, London), presents its subject, who was briefly Finance Minister, as a man of action. In both, their heads are closely observed and expressive of their characters, but the rest of each portrait, especially in the case of Saavedra, is rapidly brushed in. On a number of occasions it appears that Goya has only painted the heads of his sitters from life while the rest has been finished from a lay figure/mannequin clad in the sitter’s clothes. However in his portrait of Martin Zapater  (1797, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum), oval in format, the subject is portrayed as a wise kindly man with a deep understanding, his large nose and shining eyes painted in a conventional smooth manner of Neo-Classicism. His intimate friend is placed behind a low parapet inscribed “Goya. A su Amigo Marn. Zapater 1797”, his arms concealed and a small triangular piece of paper glimpsed perhaps alluding to their life-long correspondence.

A year later Goya painted Ferdinand Guillemardet (1798, Museé du Louvre, Paris), Ambassador of the new French Republic to Madrid, and one who had voted for the execution of the French monarch. The commission was possibly suggested by the Director of the Royal Academy, Urquijo. Completed, it was exhibited in the Academy’s annual exhibition the following year. In this splendid portrait Guillemardet is shown seated sideways on his chair wearing the official uniform of the Directoire, as designed by Jacques-Louis David, with its red, white and blue sash and feathers of his hat. Goya conveys his strong personality with relish, no doubt due to his being a representative of a new world. In return he was one of the first people to introduce Goya’s work to France, returning there with a copy of his Caprichos. Subsequently he was to become god-father to Delacroix. It is ironic that Goya was simultaneously engaged on a series of portraits of the Royal Family culminating in the  famous group portrait of The Family of Charles IV  (1800, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). In the exhibition they are represented by Charles IV in Hunting Dress and Queen Maria Luisa of Parma (both 1799, Palacio Real de Madrid). In the tumultuous year that Goya was appointed First Court Painter to Charles IV, Napoleon was named First Consul of France. The Queen is shown in the palace gardens of La Granja de San Ildefonso near Segovia. Though she was no beauty, Goya has nonetheless painted her dress and mantilla with its pink bow and her dainty shoes with great skill giving her the required regal appearance. Likewise her husband, with benevolent expression, stands holding his gun with his dog looking up at him. To modern eyes he is not really dressed for hunting since he wears the sash of the Order of Charles III and other decorations normally associated with an official portrait.

Goya continued to paint portraits of his family and friends, and those closest to him, with amazing psychological penetration, such as that of the architect Juan de Villanueva (1800-05, Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid) which is unusual in that it is painted on a poplar panel. Seated at a table on which are drawings and architectural instruments, de Villaneuva addresses the viewer in mid-speech as he holds a curled drawing in his right hand. His red waistcoat with very freely painted silver braid and buttons is extremely lively while his coat and shoulders subtly merge into the dark background. Goya’s attention is focussed on the face of Villanueva, and one isn’t made aware of the space which he occupies. The details are not particularised, thereby making the portrait uncannily life-like. Rather different in style, those of his friends Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol, and Thérèse Louise de Sureda  (1804-06, National Gallery of Art, Washington) were painted “according to Sureda’s son […] in gratitude for assistance with a print technique”. This was no doubt Sureda’s knowledge of the newly invented printmaking technique of aquatint which Goya then used in his Caprichos series. The portraits most likely date from the time when Sureda was appointed Director General of the Buen Retiro Porcelain Manufactory in 1804. One is immediately captured by the way in which this thoughtful man in his grey coat is holding his black hat with its cherry red lining. In contrast is the brilliant characterisation of Thérèse Louise’s blue silk dress shot with pinky-mauve against the yellow patterned upholstered French Empire chair. She sits erect and turns towards the spectator with large eyes and slightly disapproving expression, demonstrating how Goya has adapted his painting style for this sophisticated couple.

In 1808 a popular uprising forced Charles IV to abdicate in favour of his son, Ferdinand VII, at which moment Napoleon seized the Spanish throne installing his brother Joseph Bonaparte as King. Goya continued to paint portraits at the same time as he was working on The Disasters of War and he was commissioned by General Nicolas Philippe Guye, 1810 (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond), one of Napoleon’s most senior generals who was aide-de-camp to Joseph Bonaparte, for his portrait together with that of his six-year-old nephew who had accompanied his uncle to Spain. Goya clearly relished painting the uniform of the General with its plethora of gold braid and epaulets. Suspended from the broad ribbon over a pale blue one around his neck are his orders. In this portrait it is the uniform rather than the hesitant facial expression which attracts attention. After years of bitter fighting August 1812 saw the entry of the Duke of Wellington into Madrid and he agreed to pose for Goya. On display is a red chalk study of The Duke of Wellington (1812, The British Museum, London) where with penetrating eyes, his lips apart, his face is hollow with exhaustion. In happier times The Duke of Wellington  (1812-14, The National Gallery London), painted on panel, shows a much more sober and confident soldier in comparison with General Guye. Imposing but modest, his red jacket is covered with medals including the Golden Fleece awarded by the King of Spain.

1813 saw the final defeat of the French, at the Battle of Vittoria, and the ignominious flight of Joseph Bonaparte. In the following year Ferdinand VII was restored to the Spanish throne and was painted by Goya. Ferdinand VII in Court Dress (1814-15, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) wearing the Coronation Robes is one of the most extraordinary state portraits in the history of art. Goya’s antipathy for his royal patron can be deduced from the almost preposterous contrast between the brilliantly painted robes and sceptre, and the brutish features of the King. At this time Goya painted a Self-Portrait (1815, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) which is closely related to that in Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. In both he represents himself with a tired, resigned expression, his flesh softly modelled with shadows against a dark background.

The final gallery in the exhibition is devoted to “The Private Goya: Family Portraits” and “Final years in France”. It is well known that Goya was a proud family man and that his wife had borne him six children of whom only one son, Javier, survived. In 1805 Javier had married Gumersinda Goicoechea and to mark this event Goya painted a set of miniatures on copper of the couple, Gumersinda’s parents and her three sisters. He records their features dispassionately and it is to be welcomed that the set has been re-united from different museums with the exception of Martin Miguel de Goicoechea (1805, The Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena). They are accompanied by a number of drawings and of particular note is the powerful chalk drawing of The Artist’s wife, Josefa Bayeu de Goya (1805, Abelló Collection, Madrid).

In 1819, the year he bought the country house known as The House of the Deaf Man, Goya suffered a near fatal illness and was treated by Doctor Arrieta. To thank him, Goya painted Self Portrait with Doctor Arrieta, (1820, Minneapolis Institute of Art). This extraordinary, powerful and moving painting shows the very sick Goya, and his doctor displaying professional dedication, his arm around his patient, firmly giving him a glass from which to drink. The colours are muted, with the doctor’s green coat contrasting with the pink cover of the bed in the foreground, while Goya grasps at the sheet. In the shadows behind lurk dark figures. It is as if Goya has moved into a different key with the simplification of the elements of the picture but his treatment of his white shirt and cuffs retains his incisive brushstroke, which can also be seen in his brilliant  portrait of Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo, (1820, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). This intimate portrait of the architect, wearing a black waistcoat and broadly brushed white sleeves, his hand holding his spectacles half hidden, while his body melts into the dark background, anticipates 19^th-century French portraiture and demonstrates that Goya’s ability to paint had not lessened with his 75 years.

With the aid of French troops Ferdinand VII imposed absolute power (1824) and the liberals were hunted down. Whereupon, Goya obtained permission to travel to France on grounds of health and settled in Bordeaux, with a brief visit to Paris. Although failing in health, he continued to work, painting miniatures on ivory and exploring the new medium of lithography. This he was able to learn from Cyprien-Charles-Marie Gaulo (c.1825, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown CT) shown here in Goya’s lithograph of him. Goya painted portraits to the end and he made two trips to Madrid in 1826 and 1827 to retire formally from Court duties and arrange his pension and to settle his financial affairs. Mariano Goya y Goicoechea (c.1827, Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas) records his grandson and is his last portrait. The young man is portrayed with a lively and light touch, giving him a bright look, though his eyes are slightly strange as the left one looks straight ahead and the right eye to the right, an idiosyncrasy noted in other portraits by Goya. Nonetheless it shows how Goya at a great age was in tune with the new century.

The exhibition is accompanied by a well-illustrated publication, Goya – The Portraits, written by Xavier de Bray, with an essay ‘Reflections on Goya’s Portraits’ by Manuela B. Mena Marqués. The ‘Biographies’ of the sitters have been prepared by Thomas Gayford, while the ‘Picture Notes’ contributed by Allison Goudie are necessarily limited in scope and do not include differences of opinion between versions, for example. An admirable addition to any library, it is difficult to use in the overcrowded exhibition galleries.

The organisers must be congratulated for bringing together so many important loans which establish Goya’s achievement as a highly successful painter of portraits in this memorable exhibition, one of the best mounted by the National Gallery in recent years.

Goya: The Portraits is at The National Gallery, London, from October 7th 2015 to January 10th 2016.