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Norton Simon Museum installs portrait of Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

The Norton Simon Museum presents a portrait of Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), on Loan from The Frick Collection, New York.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, c.1790s Oil on canvas 54 1/4 x 43 x 4 in. (137.8 x 109.2 x 10.2 cm) The Frick Collection; photo: Michael Bodycomb
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, c.1790s Oil on canvas 54 1/4 x 43 x 4 in. (137.8 x 109.2 x 10.2 cm) The Frick Collection; photo: Michael Bodycomb
This special loan is the third in a biennial exchange series with The Frick Collection in New York that was initiated in 2009—a program that has also brought to Pasadena other revered treasures from that esteemed institution. Osuna’s portrait joins the three other Goya paintings and one drawing in the Norton Simon Museum’s permanent collections. In celebration of this rare loan, the Museum also presents a small installation of a subset of the assemblage of over 1,450 etchings and lithographs by Goya that Norton Simon amassed during his lifetime.

Mr. Simon’s fascination with Goya is understandable in the context of his own collection and the artist’s position in the timeline of the history of art. Goya’s formative style was greatly guided by his Spanish forebears and others, especially Velázquez, Tiepolo, Mengs and Corrado Giaquinto, as well as his teacher and brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu. In turn, this long-lived artist undeniably influenced 19th-century French artists, from the Romantics to the Realists, such as Courbet and Manet, who were clearly drawn to the master’s freedom of style as well as his satirical commentary on society, religion and politics. Given his placement in this chronology and the fact that he was born at midcentury, Goya is often called the “last Old Master”; the first 20 years of his career were largely devoted to tapestry design and religious fresco work. However, his politics, social conscience, brushwork and shift toward portrait and genre painting by the mid-1780s place him soundly in the 19th-century arena, and it is not without reason that he has also been seen in this context as the “first modern artist.” His repertoire of portraits started relatively late in his artistic career, as he was nearing his 40th year. The commission for the Frick portrait came about a decade into this part of his oeuvre, in the mid-1790s, as his renown as a portrait painter attracted the attention of royalty and aristocrats alike, including the ilustrado Don Pedro Téllez-Girón, 9th Duque de Osuna (1755–1807), who was one of Goya’s most important clients and loyal patrons.