The Picnic (La merienda)

This cartoon is "of my own invention" as Goya himself states in the invoice he delivered to the Royal Factory. He chose the composition, although he still had to take into account the tastes of the tapestry makers and the king, for which reason he always had to complete a preliminary sketch of the work, which would have to be approved before work on the cartoon could go ahead. Furthermore, in some of these cartoons it is still possible to see traces of Goya's doubts and his hesitation about how to resolve certain compositional problems, often leading him to resort to models created by Francisco Bayeu.

"Near the city" is how Goya describes this scene on the banks of the Manzanares river, where the figures are distributed across the different levels of terrain in order to create depth, in the same way as in the cartoon Hunting Party. The main group, forming a circle in the foreground, is made up of five majos (the character of the majismo appears here for the first time in the work of Goya, but in accordance with the demands of the commission rather than by any decision of Goya), and an orange-seller, with whom they are flirting. This is the start of a new genre within the strict court painting, the vitality of its pastoral themes recalling French painting from the same period. Of special interest is the still life in the foreground, around which the majos are positioned. The Hermitage of the Virgin of the Port is just visible in the background, to the right of the centre.

There exist two preparatory drawings showing studies of the majo who is smoking and the other seated majo. There was third, that no longer exists, which showed the three figures on the right of the composition.