Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 29/11/2015)

Following a series of shots showing the exhibition being set up in the Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery Director Gabriele Finaldi declares that Goya sits between Diego Velázquez and Pablo Picasso in the annals of Spanish art history. As the camera alights on `Self-Portrait' (c.1780), Finaldi suggests that Goya is a painter of the soul, while exhibition curator Xavier Bray reveals that he hoped to show how Goya developed as a portrait painter, as he was somewhat inexpert when he came to the form at the late age of 36. However, as Letizia Treves (the National Gallery's Curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings, 1600-1800) points out, over a third of Goya's pictures were portraits and they show a very different side to him than more celebrated works like `Los Caprichos' (1797-98), `The Naked Maja' (c.1797-1800), `The Disasters of War' (1810-20) and `The Black Paintings' (1819-23).

Over an awkward series of travelling shots gliding behind archly posed visitors looking earnestly at selected paintings, Goya expert Juliet Wilson-Bareau opines that his portraits reveal a good deal about himself and Sarah Symmons (editor of Goya: A Life in Letters) concurs over a close-up of `Charles III in Hunting Dress' (1786-88), which was painted with an integrity and an `invencion' that sets Goya apart from others in the field. Yet, as Bray avers, Goya not only captured a sitter's status, but he also brought a modernity to portraiture that anticipated the styles of the 19th century, while still harking back to his idol, Velázquez.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born in the Aragonese village of Fuendetodos on 30 March 1846. His family moved to Zaragoza when he was a boy and he began training to become an artist around the age of 14. Yet, while he became a cultured city dweller, Goya remained fond of hunting and socialising with his old pals. Having had two submissions to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts rejected in 1863 and 1866, Goya decided to study in Rome and José Manuel Matilla Rodriguez, the Senior Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Prado in Madrid, guides the viewer through pages from a notebook that was only rediscovered in 1993 and which demonstrates how Goya thought and stored images and details for future reference.

On his return to Spain, Goya subsisted on monastic commissions before marrying Josefa Bayeu in 1773. Her family had connections to artists at the royal court and Goya was hired to produce tapestry cartoons for the weavers at the Santa Barbara workshop. Items like `The Blind Guitarist' (1777) and `The San Isidro Meadow' (1788) depicted everyday life and helped the enlightened Charles III give the impression of being in touch with his subjects. At this time, the court painter was the German, Anton Raphael Mengs, while Goya's brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu, was also prominent. But Goya took his cues from such Velázquez canvases as `Las Meninas' (c.1656), which combined a formality and freedom that Goya channelled into his own brand of naturalism.

In 1881, he was offered the opportunity to paint one of the seven altarpieces at San Francisco El Grande. He took `The Sermon of San Bernardino of Siena' as his subject and received his first portrait commission from the Count of Floridablanca while he was working in the church. This turned out to be a workmanlike image, but the fresco was a masterpiece that echoed Velázquez's `The Surrender of Breda' (c.1635) and even included a cheeky self-portrait that clearly referenced the one in the earlier work. Thus, Goya ably exploited his big chance to prove himself and he shared his triumph with childhood friend Martin Zapater, whom he painted in 1797.

Wilson-Bareau and Symmons explain how Goya wrote countless letters to Zapater, in which he discussed everything from hunting and his beloved dogs to food and finance and the intrigues against him at court. He also mentioned his work, but these were expressions of love to a much-missed friend and reveal a good deal about Goya as both man and painter. Rodriguez confides that the correspondence could also be saucy and provides as much insight into Goya's psyche as pieces like `Self-Portrait Before an Easel' (1792-95).

In 1783, Floridablanca introduced Goya to the king's brother, the Infante Don Luis de Borbón, and, over the next two years, he painted an individual and a family portrait that helped ingratiate himself with Don Luis, who had been exiled following a sexual scandal. He also painted the Infante's beautiful young wife, Maria Teresa de Vallabriga y Rozas, and Bray takes the viewer through the figures in the largest canvas and highlights the central position of the court barber in the composition and speculates on the identity of four unknown men at the right-hand side (one of whom could possibly be Luigi Boccherini, whose music was so memorably used in Alexander Mackendrick's dark Ealing classic, The Ladykillers, 1955).

Unfortunately, Don Luis died in 1785 and Goya was reduced to showing a magpie holding his calling card in `Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga' (1788) in order to advertise his services. But his reputation was spreading and `The Count de Altamira' (1787) formed part of a commission to paint the founders of the National Bank of San Carlos that proved so popular that it was quickly followed by `The Countess of Altamira and Her Daughter Maria Augustina' (1787-88) and `Don Valentin Bellvis de Moncada y Pizarro' (c.1795), which were produced to demonstrate the enlightened sensibility of the sitters at a time when unrest was moiling in neighbouring France.

Bray notes how Goya sought to capture a subject's personality and avoided the traditional formal poses. Consequently, works like `The Duke and Duchess of Osuna and Their Children' (1788) convey much more than a mere likeness and Wilson-Bareau considers how its idealised view of a fairytale aristocracy was created from deft brushstrokes that have survived almost intact over the intervening years. In considering a solo portrait of `The Duke of Osuna' (1795-98), Treves also comments on Goya's manipulation of light in comparing him to much more formal French contemporaries like Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Moreover, as the camera lingers on `Juan Antonio Meléndez Valdés' (1797), she explains how his brushwork became looser and he stopped filling his backgrounds with extraneous details.

This theme is taken up by Joanna Dunn, a conservator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. She is restoring `Thérèse Louise de Sureda' (1804-06) and points out the speed with which Goya was working, the thinness of the paint and the loose brushwork that anticipates Impressionism. Dunn even points out the heart-shaped kiss curl on Thérèse Louise's forehead and the tiny highlight in her left eye that captures the spirit of a proud woman who stares directly at the viewer (and, thus, Goya himself).

On the accession of Charles IV, Goya was made to swear an oath of allegiance and was promoted to the position of court painter. José Luis Sancho, an historian at the Patrimonio Nacional, describes how the works he produced for the royal palace ended up at the Prado after 1814. He also reveals how the household worked and his colleague, Javier Jordan de Urries, reflects on how Goya proved his loyalty with `Charles IV in Hunting Dress' and `Queen Maria Luisa of Parma' (both 1799), with the latter being delighted with an image that showed off her bare arms and presented her homely features without undue flattery. At a time of revolution, these portraits suggested benevolence and Bray insists that Goya was both a royalist and a patriot who was content to produce what were essentially works of subtle propaganda.

In 1793, Goya took leave to recuperate from a serious illness in Seville and Cadiz. But the malady left him totally deaf and he was deprived of the pleasures of music and conversation. Wilson-Bareau wonders whether the lead in his white paint was responsible for the illness, but stresses that his hearing loss allowed Goya to assert his independence as an artist. An extract from one of his letters (accompanied by one of the numerous silent cutaway close-ups of an actor in period dress) plays over a view of `The Madhouse' (1812-15) and `The Inquisition Scene' (1812-19), which were highly personal and more audaciously revealing of contemporary Spanish society, as they uncommissioned pieces.

Although he remained at court, Goya was encouraged by the historian Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos, the poet Juan Meléndez Valdés and the Duchess of Alba to express himself. All sat for portraits, but it was `La Alba' who most inspired him and Bray rightly boasts at being allowed to include the rarely loaned 1797 canvas in the National Gallery show. He points out the `Solo Goya' inscription in the sand and the fact that Alba is wearing rings bearing both their names on adjoining fingers. However, he refuses to be drawn into the debate about whether they were lovers and considers instead the access Alba gave him to her collection of fine art and the fact that Goya may well have painted this picture as a private memento, as it seems unlikely that Alba herself ever saw it.

Following defeat against France in 1793, Charles IV was coerced into forming an alliance with the new republic. Five years later, Goya would paint the new ambassador, Ferdinand Guillemardet. But, during this period of liberalisation and uncertainty, he also produced the famous `Los Caprichos' caricatures of the aristocracy. Rodriguez notes that he was unique in having court patronage at the time he was revealing the darker side of the establishment. Yet, as he was too deaf to teach at the Royal Academy, he continued to produce works like `Cardinal Luis Maria de Borbón y Vallabriga' (c.1800), the frescoes at San Antonio de la Florida on the outskirts of Madrid and `The Family of Charles IV' (c.1800), which is such a national treasure that it is never allowed to leave the Prado.

Manuela B. Mena Marqués, the museum's senior curator of 18th-century paintings, talks us through the picture and claims it was a highly political work because it showed the strength of the monarchy at a time of crisis. Goya pieced together the composition by making solo studies of each member of the ensemble and Marqués dismisses suggestions it was a satirical picture by comparing it to Velázquez's `Las Meninas', which served a similar purpose. She concludes by commenting on the realism of Goya's faces and painter Dryden Goodwin concurs over `The Dowager Duchess of Villafranca' (1796) and `The Countess-Duchess of Benavente' (1795) that they are amazingly lifelike. Fellow portraitist Nicola Philipps muses on the relationship that develops betwwen an artist and a sitter and how this influences the final image. But her reflections on painting Princes William and Harry shed too little light on Goya's approach to justify the digression.

By contrast, Wilson-Bareau claims over `General Nicolas Philippe Guye' (1810) and `The Marchioness of Santa Cruz' (1805) that Goya had a psychological grasp of personality and body language that enabled him to catch the truth of a subject regardless of their status. Amusingly, he had painted the latter as a small girl in the Osuna family group and Wilson-Bareau explains how she had to be propped up with cushions to recline so alluringly on a couch while clutching a lyre.

But, while Goya was stage-managing such delicate allegories, Napoleon Bonaparte was trying to impose the Continental System upon Europe in order to starve Britain into submission. In a bid to shore up the Atlantic seaboard, he invaded Spain and the subsequent unrest prompted Charles IV to abdicate in favour of his son, Ferdinand VII, in 1808. The Spanish were no match for the Grand Army, however, and Goya later immortalised the French occupation of the capital in `The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid' and `The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid' (both 1814).

Ferdinand was deposed and Napoleon installed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Goya kept a record of the ensuing Peninsular War in the etchings and aquatints known as `The Disasters of War'. Eventually, however, Madrid was liberated by the Duke of Wellington and Treves notices how shell-shocked and gaunt he looks in the celebrated 1812-14 portrait. She also indicates how tricky it was for Goya to pick a way through the changes at court without allying too recklessly with any camp. Consequently, even when he was summoned to produce a suitably majestic restoration portrait in `Ferdinand VII in Court Dress' (1814-15), he refused to fawn over the king in capturing a face that only a mother could love.

Symmons, Treves and Bray contrast this almost parodic depiction of finery with the more affectionate images of friends like architects Ventura Rodriguez (1784) and Juan de Villenueva (1800-05) and court gilder Andrés del Peral (pre-1798). Moreover, they all agree that Goya paid more attention to faces than any other aspect of a portrait - although more to capture personality and his own feelings for the sitter than merely replicate likeness.

As he grew older, Goya received fewer commissions. Of his many children with Josefa (who died in 1812), only Javier survived into adulthood and Goya doted on his son, Mariano, whom he painted around 1827. By this time, he had decamped to Bordeaux. He had moved out of Madrid and endured another grave illness (which prompted him to paint `Self-Portrait with Doctor Arrieta' in 1820) and spent much of his time in Quinta del Sordo on `Black Paintings' like `The Great He-Goat', `Saturn Devouring His Son', `Duel With Cudgels', `Asmodea' and `Two Old Men Eating' (all 1820-23). Bray admits no one knows why he produced these works or what parts of the much-touched-up canvases are actually in his hand. But they seem to convey Goya's dismay at a society in turmoil and there is a marked change in emphasis when he starts to enjoy a new lease of life in France.

Following some rather meretricious slo-mo scenes of bullfighting, Rodriguez reveals that Goya was keen to do a series called `Bulls of Bordeaux' with his friend Leandro Fernández de Moratin. But, while he continued to have ideas, his health failed him and Goya died while residing with companion Leocardia Weiss and her daughter Rosario on 16 April 1828. Finaldi sums him up as a man of contradictions with a knack for survival and reminds the viewer of the diversity of his achievement in proclaiming him a big figure in art history. But this feels like a rather limp conclusion to a survey that has otherwise ably caught the complexity of Goya's genius.

Indeed, while focusing less on the actual exhibition than previous entries, this succeeds admirably in placing the portraits into the contexts of both Goya's times and his career. The experts are modestly authoritative and their evident enthusiasm is complemented by the dextrous camerawork, which captures the atmosphere of churches, palaces and galleries with a sweep that is as well judged as the precise attention to tiny details within the pictures. A little more might have been made of contemporary styles of portraiture, as there are surely plenty of examples in the National Gallery collection to draw upon. But this is a fine introduction to an artist who has frequently captured the cinematic imagination in features as different as Henry Koster's The Naked Maja (1958), Konrad Wolf's Goya, or The Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971). Carlos Saura's Goya in Bordeaux. Bigas Luna's Volavérunt (both 1999) and Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts (2006).