Goya works among Spain's lost art gems to be shown at British Museum

The Duke of Wellington as drawn by Francisco de Goya, on display at the exhibtion in the British Museum. Photograph: British Museum

The Iron Duke looks distinctly rusty in Francisco de Goya's superb drawing, faithfully recording the Duke of Wellington's haggard and exhausted appearance after the victory over the French at Salamanca in July 1812, towards the end of the peninsular war.

The drawing is one of the stars of an exhibition at the British Museum of some of its least known treasures – centuries of Spanish drawings and prints, most of which have never been exhibited or even seen, since they came into the collection.

"There is an impression that the Spanish weren't very interested in drawings or prints, and that Goya simply explodes on the scene from nowhere," curator Mark McDonald said. "As this exhibition shows, on the contrary they were producing works of the very highest quality."

McDonald trawled through the entire Spanish collection for the exhibition, hundreds of drawings and thousands of prints, indentifying many artists of works catalogued as anonymous, or tracing paintings the drawings related to. Some, including a beautiful 16th century study by Alonso Berruguete for a sculpture of the Virgin, are the only record of works which have since been destroyed.
Although many of the artists are now little known, a few are internationally famous, including Goya and two of a handful of surviving drawings by Velazquez.

Goya's drawing of Wellington was the basis of several more formal portraits, including one in the National Gallery recovered in 1961 after it was stolen, days after the museum acquired it, by a thief who got in through a toilet window.

The paintings all show a more conventionally noble figure than the exhausted soldier in the sketch: "Face to face with the man, Goya drew the truth," McDonald said.