The Drunk Mason (Goya)
Painting by Francisco de Goya. / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Drunk Mason (in Spanish: El albañil borracho) is an oil on canvas painted by Francisco de Goya, then reputed painter of tapestries for the royal palaces. It belonged to the fifth series undertaken by Goya, and, like all the pieces that compose it, was painted between 1786 and 1787.
El albañil borracho | |
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The Drunk Mason | |
Artist | Francisco de Goya |
Year | 1786-1787 |
Movement | Pre-Romanticism |
Dimensions | 15 cm × 35 cm (5.9 in × 14 in) |
Location | Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain |
Goya sold his preparatory sketches for the tapestry cartoons for the bedroom of the Infantas to the Dukes of Osuna. In the sale of their assets in 1896, three of them were acquired by Pedro Fernández Durán and Bernaldo de Quirós, who bequeathed them, along with the rest of his artistic collection, to the Museo del Prado, where they entered after his death in 1930.[1]
From 1942 it kept the catalog number P027820. That same year it appeared in the list of works in the museum (published with some delay), made by Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, then deputy director of the museum. It is exhibited in room 94 of the gallery, located on the second floor of the building designed by Juan de Villanueva.
According to the description of the museum's online gallery, it is a preparatory sketch for the tapestry cartoon El albañil herido, although Valeriano Bozal believes that it has not been elucidated whether this cartoon is a sketch prior to El albañil herido or whether it is an independent work done as a variation on the same theme.[2]
Underlying the painting is the interest that the learned of the time (headed by Jovellanos, a friend of Goya's) showed in labor and health reforms in favor of workers and peasants.[3] This issue, together with the chromatism and technique of the piece, allows us to categorize it within the pre-Romanticism.[4][5]
It has been studied by experts in Goya's art, such as Pierre Gassier and Juliet Wilson-Bareau, who assigned it catalog number 191.[6]