Boy on a Ram

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1786–87

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

127.2 × 112.1 cm (50 1/16 × 44 1/8 in.); Framed: 153.7 × 138.4 × 12.7 cm (60 1/2 × 54 1/2 × 5 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Painted with the warmth and ease of Goya at his most optimistic, *Boy on a Ram* captures a young child astride a docile ram against a luminous, softly rendered landscape that feels genuinely joyful rather than sentimental. Goya painted this work in 1786–87 as part of a series of tapestry cartoons commissioned for the Spanish Royal Palaces — compositions designed to be woven into decorative tapestries for aristocratic interiors. In this period, before illness and political disillusionment reshaped his vision, Goya embraced scenes of childhood, leisure, and rural life with a lightness that stands in striking contrast to his later work. His handling of paint here is confident and spontaneous, with loose brushwork describing the ram's fleece and the child's clothing in a way that feels alive rather than laboured. The cartoon series to which this belongs — including works like *The Swing* and *The Kite* — is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of 18th-century Spanish genre painting, blending Rococo charm with Goya's emerging naturalism. Our hand-painted oil reproduction renders every nuance of Goya's original — the tenderness of his palette, the relaxed confidence of his mark-making — on canvas, using traditional oil pigments that honour both the spirit and the craft of the source work.