Children with a Cart
Artist: Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828)
Date: 1778
Dimensions:
Painting: 57 1/4 × 37 in. (145.4 × 94 cm)
Frame: 70 1/2 × 48 1/2 × 6 in. (179.1 × 123.2 × 15.2 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1959.14
Label Text:An enormously inventive painter and printmaker, Goya was commissioned early in his career to paint more than 60 large-scale designs for tapestries to be woven at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara near Madrid. This painting is one of a series of 20 “cartoons,” or models, Goya created for tapestries to decorate the private quarters of the Prince and Princess of Asturias (the future King Carlos IV and Queen María Luisa of Spain). The Children with a Cart tapestry was intended for display above a doorway in the bedchamber of the Pardo Palace outside Madrid and was paired with a similar subject, Children Playing Soldiers.
As patterns for weavers making the tapestries, Goya’s cartoons were initially regarded as mere means to an end. Originally they were of so little consequence, in fact, that they were rolled up and stored after the tapestries were complete. They were rediscovered in 1870, nearly 100 years after their creation. The tapestry woven after Children with a Cart still survives in Pardo Palace.
As patterns for weavers making the tapestries, Goya’s cartoons were initially regarded as mere means to an end. Originally they were of so little consequence, in fact, that they were rolled up and stored after the tapestries were complete. They were rediscovered in 1870, nearly 100 years after their creation. The tapestry woven after Children with a Cart still survives in Pardo Palace.
On view
In Collection(s)