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Francisco de Goya is considered one of the most exceptional artists of the turbulent transitional period around 1800 - unconventional and at the same time style-defining. With his perceptive mind and loose brushwork, he created hauntingly moving portraits that capture the sitter with innermost psychological characteristics.
In addition to the prestigious oil paintings, often executed in large format, his outstanding strength lies in the concentration of content in the smaller medium, e.g. drawing and printmaking. This masterly ability is also documented in the six miniature portraits of members of Goya's family that have survived and are now in the possession of museums. Created in 1805, the artist's works, also executed in oil on copper and each measuring around 8 cm in diameter, depict his son and daughter-in-law, Francisco Javier Goya y Bayeu and Gumersinda Goicoechea y Galarza, as well as the bride's mother and three sisters. The family series is now considered incomplete (see Xavier Bray, Goya: The Portraits, National Gallery, London 2015, p. 153, cat. nos. 45-50).
Like the present portrait of a gentleman, the family portraits, executed in miniature format, are impastoed out of the dark brown ground, the facial expressions are individualised, and the heightening applied in white and yellow in particular is expressively enhanced with visible, rapid brushstrokes. The portrait of Cesarea Goicoechea y Galarza is also depicted in strict profile - a concise perspective that Goya also used in the extremely small-format chalk drawings of his nephew, Francisco Otin, and his son, Javier, created in 1824 (cf. Bray 2015, p. 195, cat. nos. 64 & 197, cat. no. 65). Outstanding expressiveness, however, is demonstrated in particular by the austere and at the same time very intimate profile portrait of his wife, Josefa Bayeu de Goya, which is also dated 1805.