François Crastre

“ He is never imitative, he always creates. From the living springs of great art he draws only what he needs to sustain his strength: a pious reverence for form, conscientiousness in line-work, sobriety of colour, and harmony of the component parts. For the rest, he is wholly of his own time, and of none other than his own time. He is truly the painter of national Spanish life. What he paints most willingly, most gladly, are the dances, the games, the joyous gatherings, the corridas, full of ardour and of movement, the majas, the manolas, [Pg 21] the toreros, all the popular types ”

“ Through contact with men of rank, he had acquired not only assurance but a certain air of haughtiness verging upon insolence. Being drawn into the circles of the Duchess of Alba and [Pg 63] Duchess of Ossuna, who at that time, like rival queens, were disputing the sceptre of fashion and pleasure, he witnessed and shared in many a boudoir intrigue, taking sides in these women’s quarrels, at one time supporting the one side, then again going over to the other, and at last coming out openly in favour of the Duchess of Alba, who at that time was waging a silent warfare with Maria-Luisa. ”

“ When considered under this double aspect, surrounded by the twin aureole of classicism and realism, Goya is seen to be an exceptional nature. He builds his fantasies upon a solid foundation of technique, and it is precisely because he founds his work upon this impregnable basis that he is able without apprehension to challenge the judgment of future centuries, and that his name will descend through the ages crowned with an unfading glory. ”

“ Possessed of a caustic and subtle wit, and untroubled by scruples, he was much sought after for the brilliance and the daring of his conversation. Those who did not like him learned to fear him. Before long he had scored an even bigger success as a man than as an artist. ”

“ He passed entire days in the presence of the masterpieces of the great artists. He admired them with all his heart, yet without surrendering his right to independent criticism. He recognized instinctively that there was nothing in all these illustrious compositions which corresponded to his own personal temperament, and that his fiery soul could ill adapt itself [Pg 32] to the calculated and almost geometric composition of the great frescoes in the Vatican. But he possessed too deep a reverence for art to disdain the admirable science of those great forerunners. ”

“ Charles IV. found himself in 1808 forced to abdicate in favour of his son; then came the invasion of Spain by the imperial armies, the odious treachery of Bayonne which made Ferdinand II. a prisoner and a dethroned king, while Napoleon, following his mad dream of universal conquest, placed his own brother, Joseph, on the throne of Charles V.; and finally there came the awakening of invaded Spain and its splendid national defence, resulting in the expulsion of the enemy and the fall of the Empire. ”

“ With praiseworthy insistence and undoubted talent he endeavoured to restore its bygone dignity to the painting of his time. Among many other noteworthy works, a magnificent canvas from his hand may still be seen in the sacristy of the Escurial. But this unlucky artist, like all the others, had [Pg 15]
[Pg 16] come too late into a world which had grown too old. He could no longer be understood. The same decadence had overspread the whole of Europe, but to a greater degree in Spain than elsewhere. ”

“ Could an artist who was indifferent have expressed himself in such pathetic accents? Could a renegade have been stirred to such a point by all these horrors? Furthermore, Goya made no overtures to the invaders. ”

“ The whole populace has come to make merry on the banks of the Manzanares, and the vast meadow which stretches from the hill-top where the saint’s hermitage stands, down to the very water’s edge, is covered by an immense throng, motley and variegated, pressing and crowding around the tents of the acrobats, the vendors’ booths, the open-air kitchens, and wine-shops. ”

“ PLATE VI.—KING CHARLES IV AND HIS FAMILY
(Museum of the Prado, Madrid)
Goya was the favourite painter of the king Charles IV, who conferred upon him the title of First Painter. In this fine painting, which raised the reputation of the artist to its zenith, the members of the royal family are admirably and sincerely rendered, without a trace of flattery. All the degeneracy of the dynasty is to be read in these countenances, in terms of convincing eloquence. ”

“ This singular method of abstract study, which may be called the method of intuition, explains perhaps how so frank an individuality as that of Goya, far from being enfeebled by contact with the past, became on the contrary stronger and more genuinely alive. ”

“ All around the cupola the artist has pictured a sort of gallery on which the spectators lean, and among [Pg 65] them we see a child with its legs dangling in space. This composition is remarkable in its sense of movement and varied interest. But what distinguishes it especially from other works of its type is that Goya, through an obstinate adherence to realism which cannot fail to cause some little surprise, thought that he was bound to adopt for all the personages in his picture both the costumes and the types of his own time. ”

“ Goya went first of all to Paris, but he made a stay there of short duration. Almost all his friends from Madrid, whom Ferdinand VII. had driven from Spain, had taken refuge in Bordeaux, where they formed a veritable colony. He proceeded to join it and decided to settle down among them.
He did not, however, remain inactive. This prodigious worker, who was now nearly eighty years old, could not resign himself to rest; he once again took up his brush with a hand which his great age could not yet cause to tremble. ”

“ As to the execution, it is remarkable: the lines are clear-cut and vigorous, the [Pg 67] design is solid, almost schematic in places for the purpose of enhancing the energy; with incomparable art, Goya makes use of contrasts for the purpose of obtaining astonishing relief, perfect modelling, and effects of light that produce the illusion of painting. In these compositions he shows the variety and flexibility of his talent, which undertook with equal felicity the most widely diverse branches of his art. ”

“ Goya was now the idol of the whole population of Madrid, who revelled in his fantasies and regarded him as their national painter. Already celebrated through his scenes of the life of the people, he had now acquired a new prestige through the fame of his religious paintings; and there was good reason for astonishment that he had not yet been rewarded by any official honour. His rival painters had scant love for him, or, to put it more frankly, they hated the powerful originality of his talent so far removed from the [Pg 46] slow product of their uninspired toil. ”

“ Goya made his appearance, and with him Spanish art underwent a renewal and an aggrandizement. With one formidable backward leap, he attained the point of the broken tradition, in order to reweld the glorious chain. No intermediary connects him with the splendid lineage of Spanish painters. He proceeds directly from them. He is the natural heir of Velazquez and [Pg 20] Zurbaran. He has their ardour, their vehemence, their passionate love for nature; like them, he finds the source of his strength in direct observation ”

“ On a certain clear morning in the year 1760, a monk from the convent of Santa Fé, near Saragossa, was proceeding leisurely along the road which leads to that city, and reciting his breviary as he went. Raising his eyes from between two psalms, he perceived a young lad of some fifteen years of age deeply absorbed in drawing pictures with a bit of charcoal on one of the walls which bounded the way. The monk was a lover of the [Pg 12] arts and had himself some little skill in drawing. ”

“ There he again fell in with his faithful friend, Bayeu, discovered himself to be in love with the latter’s sister, Josefa Bayeu, and married her a few months later.
His brother-in-law again offered to introduce him to Mengs, and this time, weary no doubt of adventures, he accepted the offer. The Superintendent of Fine-Arts gave him a most cordial reception. We have already had occasion to refer to the almost despotic authority which Mengs at [Pg 38] this period exerted over Spanish art and the singular direction in which he had guided it. ”

“ Upon his appointment as Superintendent of Fine-Arts in Spain, he established a sort of artistic dictatorship, which forced Spanish painting as a whole to adopt his own special aesthetic creed. The influence of Mengs would have been even more disastrous than that of his predecessors, if Providence had not placed Goya in the path of the artist monk of Saragossa. ”

“ In this class belong the admirable Young Man in Gray, the painter’s grandson—this portrait is certainly one of the most beautiful of all Goya’s works—and the famous portraits of Moratin, Boyeu, Josefa Bayeu, the architect Villanueva, and the two Majas, both the nude and the clothed, which are said to be portraits of the Duchess of Alba, taken in the same pose but under two different aspects. ”

“ Goya and the Duchess set forth side by side on the road to Andalusia, sharing the period of their disfavour on a distant estate belonging to the Duchess of Alba.
This exile, however, was of short duration and [Pg 64] only served to increase the artist’s reputation for gallantry. The king, who loved him in spite of his follies, recalled him and entrusted him with the frescoes for the chapel of San Antonio de la Florida. The task was a considerable one; it included the painting of a vast cupola and several smaller vaults, tympanums, and arches. ”

“ He sent for his son, Xavier, who had continued to reside at Madrid; and a few days later, on the 15th of April, 1828, he passed away in the arms of his friends, at the age of eighty-two years and fifteen days.
Goya was truly a great artist in the noblest sense of the term. He possessed qualities which were at one and the same time substantial and brilliant; he was versatile and original, a spirited [Pg 80] genre painter and a remarkable portraitist. “In the tomb of Goya,” writes Théophile Gautier, “the ancient art of Spain lies buried ”

“ The Infante Don Luis kept him throughout entire seasons at his palace of Arenas de San Pedro, in the province of Avila, and it was there that Goya executed an entire series of magnificent portraits and genre [Pg 55] paintings which belong to-day to the Counts of Chinchón. “Then there are the Benaventes, Dukes of Ossuna and of Candia, who for a period of more than ten years ordered work after work from him, at one time religious compositions, destined for the cathedral at Valencia, such as St. ”