Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol

This c. 1803/1804 portrait of Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol by Francisco de Goya hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

This is one of Goya's liveliest male portraits. The sitter's relaxed stance reflects the painter's intimate response to a friend, a young liberal whose disheveled hair and garb in the mode of revolutionary France speaks not only of his affinity for contemporary French fashion, but also of his sympathy for current French politics.

Goya's life spanned a period of political upheaval and military turmoil. In the early years of the nineteenth century, before he witnessed the horror of the Peninsular wars, Goya welcomed the idea of a Napoleonic invasion, believing the ideals of the French revolution to be the only antidote to the abuses of the Spanish monarchy. Bartolomé Sureda was one of a group of like-minded liberal intellectuals.

A clever young industrialist, Sureda studied cotton spinning in England in order to introduce the technique into Spain. Later he went to France to learn the secrets of Sèvres porcelain manufacture and in 1802 became director of the Spanish royal porcelain factory at Buen Retiro. During the French invasion of Spain, Napoleon considered him so important to Spanish industry that he detained him in France. Since this portrait predates many of the sitter's illustrious achievements, Goya presented him, not as a brilliant industrialist, but simply as an urbane young man. -- NPG

Brown and Mann in their 1990 book Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries give this discussion of Bartolomé Sureda.

Bartolomé Sureda (1769-1850) was born in Palma de Mallorca. After beginning the study of art in Palma, he moved to Madrid to continue his training at the Real Academia de San Fernando, in which he enrolled on 2 November I792.5 There he met Agustín de Betancourt, the great Spanish engineer and mechnical designer, who discovered Sureda's potential as an industrial draftsman and administrator. Sureda accompanied Betancourt to England in 1793 to study manufacturing techniques, returning to Spain in 1796.

While in England, Sureda learned a new method of aquatint, an example of which was shown by Betancourt to the Real Academia on 5 March I797.6 His son Alejandro later reported that Sureda had taught a new graphic technique to Goya, which is usually assumed to have been mezzotint, but was almost certainly aquatint. This would explain Goya's masterful tonal effects in the Caprichos, published in 1799, unlike his hesitant use of the medium in the prints after paintings by Velazquez of 1778 to 1779.

In 1800 Sureda was sent by the Spanish government to France to study the manufacture of textiles and porcelain; he returned to Spain in September 1803, having married Thérèse Louise Chapronde Saint Amand, the subject of the pendant portrait in the National Gallery of Art. On 18 October 1803, Sureda entered the Real Fábrica de Porcelana del Buen Retiro, and on 8 August 1804 was appointed director de labores of this famous porcelain factory. Under Sureda's guidance a new type of hard-paste porcelain was invented, which restored the quality and finances of the operation. In September 1807 Sureda became director, but the French invasion ofthe following year and subsequent destruction of the
factory caused him to emigrate to France, where he and his wife lived from 1809 until the final months of 1814.

Upon his return, Sureda settled in Mallorca and founded a factory for worsted cloth. However, in February 1817 he was called to Madrid to direct the Real Fábrica de Paños in Guadalajara. On 26 March 1821, he became acting director of the Real Fábrica de Loza de la Moncloa, and then, in 1822, permanent director. Four years later he was also made director of the Real Fábrica de Cristales de La Granja. He retired from royal service on 13 November 1829 and went back to his native Mallorca, where he devoted time to painting, a lifelong avocation. He painted
landscapes, religious subjects, and genre scenes in the manner of Goya. His death occurred on 10 May 1850.

The portraits of Sureda and his wife are usually dated in the period 1801-1808, although Desparmet thought they were done as late as 1820. As Salas notes, the logical moment for the execution of the portraits would be after Sureda's arrival from Paris. Bartolomé was recalled on 2 September 1803 and is documented as at work in the Buen Retiro factory on 18 October. This suggestion is confirmed by the costume, which conforms to Parisian fashion from about 1799. It features a close-fitting redingote with deep lapels and high collar in a dark color, a striped waistcoat, a cravat wound several times around the neck, and a high-crowned hat. His hair is worn in a short style known variously as "à la Brutus" or "à la Titus." If the portrait was indeed done shortly after his return from France, the sitter would have been about thirty-five years old. -- Brown  & Mann, 1990

 The Cravat

The Hat