Poor Children at the Well (Los pobres de la fuente)

The tapestry of this work would have hung on the east wall of the room, forming a pair with The Injured Mason.

A woman and her two children stand at a fountain, filling their pitchers with water. Behind them, a bare tree indicates that it is the cold season, and in the background we see a building that appears to be a granary.

The feeling of winter, which this piece shares with other tapestries hanging in this room, is heightened by the use of a cold colour palette, by the presence of bare, stripped landscapes and by the figure of the boy who is shivering and trying to warm his frozen hands inside his jacket.

It was Cruzada Villaamil who gave the work its title of Los pobres, The Poor, although there is nothing in the picture itself to suggest that the characters are poor; quite the opposite, the woman wears shoes with buckles, thus confirming that this is a relatively well-off family.

Nordström points out the similarities between this painting and the group of figures that appears on the left-hand side of the work by Antonio Viladomat Alegoría del invierno (Winter Allegory) (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona), a piece that Goya almost certainly would have seen.