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Shown from the knees up, a cleanshaven, young man with pale, peachy skin leans on his right elbow, to our left, against a ledge and holds a black top hat in that hand in this vertical portrait painting. His body faces us and he looks slightly off to our left, as if just over our left shoulder, with dark eyes. He has a wide nose, his pale pink lips are closed, and he has the hint of a five o’clock shadow on his square jaw and cleft chin. Sideburns come down past his ears, and straight brown hair falls in long bangs over his forehead and around his eyes and ears. White cloth wraps around his neck and is tied in a knot at the base of his throat. His white vest is striped faintly with light blue. Over that, his gray jacket has a black collar at the back and wide, gray lapels that reach his shoulders. The jacket is fitted to his waist, where it is buttoned, and then flares out into the shadows at his knees. Silver buttons gleam in the light from our left, down that side of the jacket. His left fist, on our right, rests against his hip as he leans on his other elbow, presumably on a ledge or high table. He holds the black top hat in that hand so we see the crimson-red lining within. The dark background behind him is subtly streaked with brick and coffee brown.
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Shown from the knees up, a cleanshaven, young man with pale, peachy skin leans on his right elbow, to our left, against a ledge and holds a black top hat in that hand in this vertical portrait painting. His body faces us and he looks slightly off to our left, as if just over our left shoulder, with dark eyes. He has a wide nose, his pale pink lips are closed, and he has the hint of a five o’clock shadow on his square jaw and cleft chin. Sideburns come down past his ears, and straight brown hair falls in long bangs over his forehead and around his eyes and ears. White cloth wraps around his neck and is tied in a knot at the base of his throat. His white vest is striped faintly with light blue. Over that, his gray jacket has a black collar at the back and wide, gray lapels that reach his shoulders. The jacket is fitted to his waist, where it is buttoned, and then flares out into the shadows at his knees. Silver buttons gleam in the light from our left, down that side of the jacket. His left fist, on our right, rests against his hip as he leans on his other elbow, presumably on a ledge or high table. He holds the black top hat in that hand so we see the crimson-red lining within. The dark background behind him is subtly streaked with brick and coffee brown.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol

Francisco Goya

Date
c. 1803/1804
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 119.7 x 79.3 cm (47 1/8 x 31 1/4 in.) framed: 137.8 x 98.4 cm (54 1/4 x 38 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1941.10.1
Credit line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. P.H.B. Frelinghuysen in memory of her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer
Time span
1801 to 1825
Department
CIS-B
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • male
  • portrait
  • Spanish
  • Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries
  • Sureda y Miserol, Bartolome
Provenance

Possibly Pedro Escat, Palma de Mallorca.[1] Sureda family, Madrid and Seville;[2] (Durand-Ruel et Cie, Paris and New York); purchased 28 September 1897 by Mr. and Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer [Henry Osborne Havemeyer, 1847-1907, and Louisine Waldron Elder, 1855-1929], New York;[3] by inheritance 1929 to their daughter, Mrs. Peter H.B. Frelinghuysen [1884-1963, née Adaline Havemeyer], Morristown, New Jersey; gift 1941 to NGA. [1] Escat's ownership is first mentioned by Charles Yriarte, _Goya, sa biographie et le catalogue de l'oeuvre_, Paris, 1867: 148, and subsequently is noted in Conde de la Viñaza, _Goya, su tiempo, su vida, sus obras_, Madrid, 1887: 263, n. 121. [2] Janusz Gerij, a descendant of the Sureda family, wrote to the NGA that the family has photographs of both NGA 1941.10.1 and NGA 1942.3.1 that were taken about 1892 (letter of 13 May 1995, in NGA Department of Visual Services, copy in NGA curatorial files). [3] Frances Weitzenhoffer, "The Creation of the Havemeyer Collection, 1875-1900," Ph.D. diss., The City University of New York, 1982: 265, cited in _Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection_, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993: 222, 343 no. 291. Louisine E. Havemeyer, in _Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector_, New York, 1961: 136, recalls that "we bought...the pair of 'Sureda' portraits for less than fifty thousand [pesetas]." Mrs. Havemeyer inherited the collection after her husband's death in 1907.

NGA object ID 985. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.