Philip IV, hunter

Faithfully following the canvas painted by Diego Velazquez around 1632-1634, now in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Goya drew Philip IV, hunter in red pencil. As in the original work, the king stands before a countryside landscape. He is dressed as a hunter and wears a tabard or wide waistcoat over his costume. His head is adorned with a cap, his neck with lace and his hands with gloves. In his right hand he holds a shotgun. The monarch is accompanied by a mastiff hunting dog, to which Velazquez gave great prominence. Behind the figure of the king, a tree completes the composition.

Goya attempted to depict Velazquez's work as faithfully as possible, even drawing the details of the king's clothing, such as the filigree of the sleeve, the lace of the shirt collar and the embroidery of the jacket, and the regrets that can be seen in the painting on the king's left leg. However, he did not depict in detail the wooded, rocky landscape that appears in the background on the right of the composition, but limited himself to making a small sketch of it.

The Aragonese painter was able to capture the haughty air of the monarch in his face as he did in the rest of the royal representations based on works by Velázquez. The light and shade are also treated in this drawing, leaving the area on the left darker to the detriment of the right, which is much cleaner and brighter, as in Velázquez's oil painting.

This drawing, unlike The Water Carrier of Seville, has no evidence of engraving. It is one of what Gassier-Wilson called additional drawings: five drawings copied from works by Velazquez to be engraved but for which no proof of condition is known. All of them are in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, along with others from the series that were engraved. Apart from the present one, these drawings are: The Water Carrier of Seville; Prince Balthasar Charles, hunter; The Child of Vallecas and The Infant Charles of Austria.