Goya’s portrait of a gentleman in a black frock coat has long been identified as a portrait of the distinguished Spanish banker, Don Pedro Gil de Tejada y del Saz. It dates from the height of Goya’s fame as painter to the Spanish court and aristocracy, before the humiliating overthrow of the Spanish Monarchy by the French in 1808 when the sitter lost his life. Goya’s portraits demonstrate his genius at capturing both a physical likeness and the character of the sitter, particularly notable in this painting in which the artist portrays the soberly dressed banker seated on a gilt wood chair upholstered in red silk. The portrait has remained in the collection of the heirs of the sitter’s friends, the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, to the present day.



Gil de Tejada was born in 1741 in Gallinero de Cameros, a mountainous area between the Navarrese city of Logrono and Soria in the the heart of the famed Rioja wine region. As a young man he was invited by a family connection, Policarpo Saenz de Tejada, to join the newly founded Bank of San Carlos, the precursor of the Bank of Spain, founded by King Charles III in 1782. His intelligence soon led to him being given a more senior role and the friendship of his near contemporary and fellow employee of the bank, Gasparo Melchior de Jovellanos (1744-1811), who like Gild e Tejada came from the north of Spain (Asturias), provided Pedro with an entrée to the highest levels of Madrid intellectual society. In 1784 Jovellanos was appointed director of the Madrid Economic Society (Sociedad Económico Matritense) set up by the king in 1782 to examine the state of the Spanish economy and Pedro Gil de Tejada became one of its councillors.




Jovellanos’s career had been advanced initially thanks to the support of Don José Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio Gonzaga, XV Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose wife (and cousin) Teresa de Silva Alvarez de Toledo, XIII Duchess of Alba, is renowned today as a friend and patron of Goya. Both the Duke and Duchess were painted several times by Goya, the two portraits of the Duke (who died in 1796, without leaving any children) dating from 1795, approximately the same date as the portrait of Gil de Tejada. The latter was already well-acquainted with the ducal couple through Jovellanos and also the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, who later acquired this portrait. In 1799 Gil de Tejada was appointed director of the Bank for the province of Leon a post he held until 1807. Despite his age (he was sixty-seven), Pedro Gil de Tejada joined the uprising against the French occupation on the 2 May 1808; he was wounded in the subsequent action and died of his injuries, a Spanish patriotic hero.