A drawing of the late Spanish painter Francisco de Goya was sold today at auction in London for 725,000 pounds ($ 1,124,960) within the estimated price, said today Sotheby’s.
The drawing, entitled “A French soldier with a drinking companion” (A French soldier with a drinking buddy), had an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 pounds price (between 931,000 and 1.24134 million euros) , and was acquired by an anonymous buyer.
This is a work of the last stage of Goya, a moment in which he expressed his extraordinary artistic vision through creating powerful very personal drawings.
This drawing belongs to one of the last two private albums of the artist, now known as “Album of Bordeaux I and II”, containing some of the most important and extraordinary works of Goya.
In these drawings the artist was not only terrifying and dramatic scenes, but also funny and tender or, as in the drawing auctioned today, enigmatic representations of events, of which critical satirical content or is in the eye of the beholder.
The stars of the show are a French soldier of the Imperial Guard drunk, with a lost look in his eyes, and a companion, which appears to be the one controlling the situation, trying to capitalize on his partner drinks.
As usual in the most expressive drawings of Goya belonging to the latter period, the skillful deployment of areas of intense light, emerging from the darkness dramatic way, highlights the importance and pathos of the scene.
Performed when the artist was in exile in Bordeaux between his arrival there in the fall of 1824 and his death four years later, according to Gregory Rubinstein, a specialist in ancient painting of Sotheby’s, is “a truly outstanding work of the artist of the last stage.”
The drawing was last auctioned in 1869 and has since remained in private collections in France and Switzerland.
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