In the manner of Francisco Goya
Spanish, 1746–1828
The Dog, Waiting for a Reply, 2026
Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas
123 × 164 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.4.5
A great slope of ochre fills the picture, and over its edge a small dog lifts its head towards the sky, where a single blue dot floats. That is all it has. Below, a crowd of faces waits open-mouthed, which Goya did not paint and would have understood. His dog, looking up at nothing, is the loneliest picture in Madrid. This one has a notification. It is not better.
The brief
A small dog's head alone above a vast tilted plane of ochre, looking up at a single blue notification dot floating in an enormous empty brown sky. Late Spanish Romantic oil painting from the black-paintings period, near-monochrome browns, blacks and dirty whites with one passage of blood red, figures with gaping mouths and wide eyes emerging from darkness, coarse dragged brushwork and palette-knife smears, unstable composition, grotesque satire and pity in equal measure, muddy matte surface with cracks. Flat frontal reproduction of the painting, the canvas fills the frame edge to edge, even lighting, no frame, no wall, no text.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
