In his portraits he is a realist--versatile, vivid, often unflinching in his brutality, unsurpassed, when he wills it, in perfection of treatment and intention. His finish is the fulfilment of his purpose, which has nothing in common with finish in the sense of elaboration. True, many of his likenesses are ‘washed in with a certain impatience, almost as if the painter had tired of his subject’ (C. Gasquoine Hartley, in _A Record of Spanish Painting_); true again, the restlessness of his temperament made him inclined to seize on a characteristic rendering of pose and feature: but his portraits reflect the idea in his mind; they express the always very definite something he has to say; the effect is true and the picture is finished. It was his method to arrange his canvas, his model and all his accessories, and then remain wrapped in profound reflection. When his study of his model was ended he set to work, either to materialise his inspiration in a swift realisation of a personality, or to produce a suave, lingering piece of workmanship which recalls the refinement of Gainsborough in its elaborate, exquisite detail. Goya, by virtue of his portraits, has been rightly acclaimed the legitimate descendant of Velazquez, and, like the great Court painter of a previous century, he is a magnificent exception. But the comparison between the two masters cannot be pushed too far. Velazquez was a realist to whom the world appeared as a beautiful vision; Goya was a realist to whom life was always a drama and not infrequently a satiric melodrama played in the tempo of a farce. Velazquez depicted men and women at their noblest; Goya, when he was in the mood, detected the worst that was in them and he exposed it with a flourish. The grandeur of the times which we discern in the portraits of Velazquez is the grandeur of the artist’s conception and treatment. The equestrian effigies of Philip III. and Philip IV. reveal the magnificence and nobility of conscious kingship which neither of the monarchs possessed; the royal likenesses convey to us a prosperity which impoverished Spain did not enjoy under the rule of his kingly sitters. Thus it is curious to find that some critics, but particularly the Conde de la Viñaza, should see in Goya’s work a similar determination to idealise and glorify the characters of his royal patrons. ‘The celebrated canvas of the family of Charles IV.,’ writes Goya’s latest Spanish biographer, ‘together with the equestrian portraits’--the composition of which, as Mr. Rothenstein reminds us, he may well have learned from Velazquez--‘of Maria Luisa and her husband, of Ferdinand VII. and Godoy, show forth a grandeur of mind and intellectual and moral qualities which these people did not possess. The Godoy represented by Goya as though he were a sort of Marquis de Pescara, although he never wore his uniform except at sham fights, recalls the fact that Velazquez also, flattering the ridiculous