A Youth seated with a Basket; and A seated Majo and Maja in Conversation

In 1764, aged eighteen, Ramón Bayeu arrived in Madrid and, with the help of his elder brother Francisco, who was already a respected painter, entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. A year later he started to work for Anton Raphael Mengs, producing tapestry cartoons for the Real Fábrica de Santa Bárbara. His early work is influenced by the latter and by his brother, Francisco, whom he helped with the pictorial decorations in the Palacio Real during the last years of the 1760s. Although he was less known than his brother, Ramón won first prize at the Academy in 1766, only two years after his arrival in Madrid. His production of designs for the royal tapestry factory in the second half of the 1760s and in the 1770s is considerable. In 1780 Ramón returned to Saragossa to work on decorations in the cathedral. During the 1780s his pictures show a crisp neoclassical style, as can be seen, for example, in the three altarpieces in the convent of S. Ana in Valladolid, a commission he shared with Goya. In 1791, two years prior to his death, Ramón was appointed Pintor de Cámara by the King (see José Luis Morales y Marín, Los Bayeu, Saragossa, 1979, pp. 131-33).

The present sketches are probably preliminary to cartoons for the royal tapestry factory. The cartoon for the Youth seated with a Basket is in the Prado Museum (1952 catalogue, no. 2523). Both sketches can be dated to before the artist's return to Saragossa in 1780, and, since they show the influence of Goya, were probably painted after the latter started to produce designs for the Royal tapestry factory. Like Goya's tapestry designs, Ramón Bayeu's cartoons depict popular subjects in the Madrid tradition, yet their peaceful tranquility sets them apart from the more mannered rococo style of his contemporaries.

A replica of the Majo and Maja was formerly in the Casa Torres Collection in Madrid (see Exhibited).