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Lot Essay
After the death of Goya's wife, Josefa Bayeu, on 26 June 1812, an inventory of the paintings in the couple's possession was drawn up (see Document I, below). This document included twelve still lifes by the artist, all of which probably dated from the period 1808-1812. The present painting was one of twelve. Two others, described in an 1865 inventory (see Document III, below) as depicting dead game with partridges and fruit and fish, remain untraced. The others are preserved in the following collections: Sheep's Head and Joints (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Gassier-Wilson, no. 903), Dead Turkey (Museo del Prado, Madrid: Gassier-Wilson, no. 904), Dead Birds (Museo del Prado, Madrid; Gassier-Wilson,no. 905), Plucked Turkey and Fish in Frying Pan (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Gassier-Wilson, no. 906), Golden Bream (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Gassier-Wilson, no. 907), Duck (Anda-Bührle collection, Zurich; Gassier-Wilson, no. 908), Woodcocks (Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas; Gassier-Wilson, no. 910), Salmon Steaks (Museum Stiftung Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur), and Bottles, Fruit and Bread (Museum Stiftung Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur).
All twelve still lifes remained together until at least 1865. They had passed by inheritance to Goya's grandson Mariano and are recorded in 1845 in an inventory of the estate of the latter's father-in-law, Francisco Javier de Mariátegui, a prosperous architect (see Document II, below). Mariátegui bequeathed the twelve paintings to his daughter, Maria de la Concepción, Mariano Goya's wife. In June 1846, she mortgaged the set of paintings, along with other property from her father's estate, as security against a loan from one of Mariano's business partners, Francisco de Narváez, Conde de Yumuri (see N. Glendinning, 1994, p. 107, note 28). Having defaulted on the loan (which was intended to purchase a patent of nobility for the socially ambitious Mariano), Maria de la Concepción deeded the paintings on 1 August 1851 to Yumuri. After the latter's death on 1 September 1865, they were inherited by his son. The next recorded owner of four of them, including Still Life with Hares, was Comte Huytens de Terbecq (see I. Rose-De Viejo, 1997, under literature). At his sale in 1877, they were bought in and his heirs subsequently sent them to auction in 1882, where they were acquired by an unknown party. This was the last time any of these were to appear at auction.
The importance of Goya's contribution to the genre of still life painting is perhaps best described by William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry, in their essay 'Goya and the Still Life' in the catalogue of the exhibition, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, London, The National Gallery, 22 February - 21 May, 1995, p. 175ff.:
'Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) did not paint many still lifes; so far as we know he did not paint any until he was over sixty years old. Seen against the backdrop of eighteenth - and early nineteenth - century still-life painting, Goya's still lifes represent a rupture with tradition as abrupt and shocking as that produced by any aspect of his work. They are at once beautiful and poignant objects; all but one depicts dead animals. Not the courtly game of a hunter's trophy, not the meat on a butcher's stall, nor the dead beasts traditionally symbolizing life's brevity or nature's bounty - but animals that have been slaughtered, from whom life has been violently torn, in whose images there is a depth of pathos as life-affirming as anything to be found in the greatest works of Velázquez or Zurbarán. In the unorthodox technical explorations of these works, Goya expanded the reach of his medium beyond the limits previously known: using his brushes, his knife, his fingers, combining patches of heavy impasto with the thinnest of glazes, producing shimmering transparencies and iridescences and the most desolate voids of darkness. Considering the impact of those works, one might well wonder why Goya waited so long to paint a still life, as well as why he painted any at all. We have to understand how they fit into his overall oeuvre, because, when he finally did approach the genre, he changed it for future generations, just as he reinvented nearly every form of painting and graphic art that he embraced. . . Growing sick of painting what others wanted him to paint in his youth, such as the tapestry cartoons, he had no need, unlike Meléndez, to paint still lifes for a living; but in the bitter years of the Peninsular War, preoccupied with death and violence, he seized on the genre as something relevant to his larger concerns. In doing so, he was not wholly unlike the first generation of still-life painters, who acted out of a commitment to deeply held ideas about the nature of art. If there is an important legacy from Goya's still lifes, it is that he made the still life respectable again, by elevating it to a level of seriousness not to be found in the pretty, bourgeois works of his contemporaries. The legitimate heirs of this legacy were not his immediate Spanish followers; they were, perhaps, Cezanne, Picasso and all who finally saw the potential he rediscovered'.
All twelve still lifes remained together until at least 1865. They had passed by inheritance to Goya's grandson Mariano and are recorded in 1845 in an inventory of the estate of the latter's father-in-law, Francisco Javier de Mariátegui, a prosperous architect (see Document II, below). Mariátegui bequeathed the twelve paintings to his daughter, Maria de la Concepción, Mariano Goya's wife. In June 1846, she mortgaged the set of paintings, along with other property from her father's estate, as security against a loan from one of Mariano's business partners, Francisco de Narváez, Conde de Yumuri (see N. Glendinning, 1994, p. 107, note 28). Having defaulted on the loan (which was intended to purchase a patent of nobility for the socially ambitious Mariano), Maria de la Concepción deeded the paintings on 1 August 1851 to Yumuri. After the latter's death on 1 September 1865, they were inherited by his son. The next recorded owner of four of them, including Still Life with Hares, was Comte Huytens de Terbecq (see I. Rose-De Viejo, 1997, under literature). At his sale in 1877, they were bought in and his heirs subsequently sent them to auction in 1882, where they were acquired by an unknown party. This was the last time any of these were to appear at auction.
The importance of Goya's contribution to the genre of still life painting is perhaps best described by William B. Jordan and Peter Cherry, in their essay 'Goya and the Still Life' in the catalogue of the exhibition, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, London, The National Gallery, 22 February - 21 May, 1995, p. 175ff.:
'Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) did not paint many still lifes; so far as we know he did not paint any until he was over sixty years old. Seen against the backdrop of eighteenth - and early nineteenth - century still-life painting, Goya's still lifes represent a rupture with tradition as abrupt and shocking as that produced by any aspect of his work. They are at once beautiful and poignant objects; all but one depicts dead animals. Not the courtly game of a hunter's trophy, not the meat on a butcher's stall, nor the dead beasts traditionally symbolizing life's brevity or nature's bounty - but animals that have been slaughtered, from whom life has been violently torn, in whose images there is a depth of pathos as life-affirming as anything to be found in the greatest works of Velázquez or Zurbarán. In the unorthodox technical explorations of these works, Goya expanded the reach of his medium beyond the limits previously known: using his brushes, his knife, his fingers, combining patches of heavy impasto with the thinnest of glazes, producing shimmering transparencies and iridescences and the most desolate voids of darkness. Considering the impact of those works, one might well wonder why Goya waited so long to paint a still life, as well as why he painted any at all. We have to understand how they fit into his overall oeuvre, because, when he finally did approach the genre, he changed it for future generations, just as he reinvented nearly every form of painting and graphic art that he embraced. . . Growing sick of painting what others wanted him to paint in his youth, such as the tapestry cartoons, he had no need, unlike Meléndez, to paint still lifes for a living; but in the bitter years of the Peninsular War, preoccupied with death and violence, he seized on the genre as something relevant to his larger concerns. In doing so, he was not wholly unlike the first generation of still-life painters, who acted out of a commitment to deeply held ideas about the nature of art. If there is an important legacy from Goya's still lifes, it is that he made the still life respectable again, by elevating it to a level of seriousness not to be found in the pretty, bourgeois works of his contemporaries. The legitimate heirs of this legacy were not his immediate Spanish followers; they were, perhaps, Cezanne, Picasso and all who finally saw the potential he rediscovered'.