Francisco Goya

“ Into an age of painting which had sunk to mediocrity, when artists were endeavoring to treat their themes only according to prescribed rules and manners, came Francisco José Goya (1746-1828) , the greatest painter of his time and one of the greatest of all history, deserving of a place with Velázquez, El Greco, and Murillo, perhaps ranking ahead of the two last-named in the list of superb exponents of the pictorial art whom Spain has given to the world. The keynote of his work was the free expression of his own personality, unhampered by convention. ”

“ In his disastrous reign flourished Francisco Goya y Lucientes, the last Spanish painter who has obtained a niche in the Temple of Fame. Though portraits and caricatures were his forte, in that venerable museum of all that is beautiful in Spanish Art—the cathedral at Toledo—is to be seen a fine religious production of his pencil, representing the Betrayal of our Lord. ”

“ The etched collections by which Goya is best known include “Los Caprichos,” which have a satirical meaning known only to the few; they are bold, weird and full of force. “Los Proverbios” are also supposed to have some hidden intention. “Los Desastres de la Guerra” may fairly claim to depict Spain during the French invasion. In the bull-fight series Goya is evidently at home; he was a skilled master of the barbarous art, and no doubt every sketch is true to nature, and from life.
Goya retired from Madrid, desiring probably during his latter years to escape the trying climate of that capital. ”

“ The painter praised the spot enthusiastically. It was the only corner for artists that could be found in Madrid. It was there that the great Don Francisco had worked. It seemed as though at some turn in the path they would run into Goya, sitting before his easel, scowling ill-naturedly at some dainty duchess who was serving as his model.
Modern clothes seemed out of keeping with this background. Renovales declared that the correct apparel for such a landscape was a bright coat, a powdered wig, silk stockings, walking beside a Directoire gown. ”

“ A careful examination of some of the drawings made for these etchings indicates a steadiness of purpose not usually discovered in Goya’s craft as draughtsman. He is much more widely known by his etchings than his oils; the latter necessarily must be sought in public and private collections, principally in Spain, while the former are known and prized in every capital of Europe. ”

“ Péral, Goya has adapted to the refinement of his subject a color-scheme and technique of unsurpassable delicacy. The features, pale pink, shaded with grey, are set in a frame of long whitish yellow hair; the coat is greyish drab, the vest pearly grey with green sprigs, the figure being placed against a dark olive-black background. The expression of the whole is of a man of rare cultivation and fine mental poise. The scheme of color recalls the Portrait of Francisco{181} Bayeu, in the Prado, except that, in the latter, silvery blue is substituted for the green ”

“ A spirited small creature bears the little Don Carlos; a showy, powerful brute the swaggering Olivares; a beast, trained in stately menage, the proud and reserved king. With Goya, however, there is little apparent study of the structure or character of the animal; it is felt for its value as a handsome mass. And the rider’s figure seems to have been felt in the same way; as if by emphasising its mass the artist could evade the inevitable commonplace of the face. ”

“ Goya "had lived." His life was that of the nobleman-artist—a stormy novel, full of mysterious amours. His pupils, on parting the curtains of his studio, saw the silk of royal skirts on their master's knees. The dainty duchesses of the period resorted to that robust Aragonese of rough, manly gallantry to have him paint their cheeks, laughing like mad at these intimate touches. ”

“ The old Goya remained, strong in the creation of a lofty art. The last twenty years of his life were full indeed, and represented its most vigorous phase, the most energetic in the whole course of his achievement. Scenes of war and disaster occupied almost the whole of this important period, full of a profound pessimism, which still does not lack a certain graceful style, and displays unceasingly some of the saddest thoughts which man has ever known. These works of Goya are not of any party, are not political nor sectarian. They are simply human. ”

“ On to the stage of this shabby comedy of court life, set with the scenery of a nation’s humiliation, Goya entered and made an immediate hit. A man of violent passions, without conscience or scruples, he played his part as if all the characteristics of his contemporaries were represented in himself. He has left a self-portrait, painted some seven years after his appearance on{173} the scene. It now hangs in the Prado and might be mistaken for the portrait of a bull-fighter. Indeed, it reminds us that at one period of his young days Goya became efficient in the bull-ring. ”

“ Literature, taste, and art were infected by French influences, Parisian sparks of wit, lightning esprit, and Parisian immorality; and the same rumbling earthquake which wrecked the throne of France was soon to shatter that of Spain. In Goya’s works there is a refulgence of all this. But, like every great artist, he is not only the expression of his epoch, but also its leader; he almost anticipates the age which shall succeed it. ”

“ He swore allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte and utilised the sufferings of his country for a series of etchings, The Disasters of War, in which the horrors of the military invasion are depicted with unexampled force and naturalism. After Wellington had expelled the French, Goya again played the part of opportunist and pledged his fealty to Ferdinand VII. The King, remarking that Goya’s conduct deserved hanging but that he was a great artist and should be forgiven, restored him to his position of Court Painter. Goya, however, was beginning to decline. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The advent of Goya in the middle of the eighteenth century marks a sort of providential date in the art of the peninsula. The Spanish school had fallen into profound decadence. Of the great traditions of Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran, and El Greco, nothing survived save the regret of knowing that they were forever lost. All the prodigious strength and powerful realism of that glorious period had become degenerate, enfeebled, anaemic to the point of utter decrepitude. In the horde of artists of that time, not a single hand was capable of taking up the brush let fall by the great predecessors. ”

“ Goya was born March 31, 1746, at Fuente de Todos, in the province of Aragon. The son of a small farmer, he was [pg 338] placed when very young in the local Academy of Fine Arts at Saragossa, where he received instruction from Bayen and Luzan, painters little known outside of Spain. The swashbuckler instincts which were to govern him through life manifested themselves here, where in a street brawl he laid low three of his adversaries. He found it prudent to evade both justice and the vengeance which followed swift and sure in those days in Spain, by flying to Madrid. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This immense work required no less than three years of the artist’s time, and he expended upon it all his science and all his exceptional qualities as a colourist. It is an attractive work, cleverly composed, possessing a fine decorative effect, brilliant and warm, and in no way inferior to the most resplendent frescoes of Tiepolo. Only one thing was lacking, the religious spirit, of which Goya was wholly destitute. In works of this order, dexterity is not sufficient; the breath of the inner zeal is necessary; cleverness, dexterity, the gift of colour, cannot make up for the absence of faith. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Renovales thought that art is like light, which acquires color and brightness from the objects it touches. Goya had passed through a stormy period; he had been a spectator of the resurrection of the soul of the people and his painting contained the tumultuous life, the heroic fury that you look for in vain in the canvases of that other genius, tied as he was to the monotonous existence of the palace, unbroken except by the news of distant wars in which they had little interest and whose victories, too late to be useful, had the coldness of doubt. ”

“ A single stroke expresses a whole physiognomy, and a trail of shade serves as a background, or allows the spectator to catch a glimpse of some landscape only half-sketched in, or some pass of a sierra, fit scenes for a murder, a witches' sabbath, or a tertulia of gipsies; but this is rare, for the background cannot be said to exist in Goya's works. Like Michael Angelo, he completely despises external nature, and only takes just sufficient to enable him to group his figures, and very often he composes his background of clouds alone. ”

“ For sensitiveness to the beauty of the human body, for curious research in the esthetic inversion, the beauty of the hideous, Goya stands alone. No one, not even Leonardo, has plumbed so deep in the hidden shadowy parts. ”

“ By the time that Goya reached his maturity the range of his palette was reduced to very restricted limits: blue, white, black, vermilion, some of the ochres and burnt sienna. And his tools were correspondingly meagre. Brushes of the rudest make served his purpose; or he would use a sponge or stick, securing some of his subtlest effects with the ball of his thumb. From several unfinished bust-portraits in the Prado it appears that he worked over an under-surface of orange-red; which no doubt accounts for the warmth and fulness of his greys. ”

“ The genius of Goya was a robust, imperious, and fulminating genius; his iron temperament was passionate, dramatic, and revolutionary; he painted a picture as he would have fought a battle. He was an athletic, warlike, and indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velazquez; fantastic like Hogarth; eccentric like Rembrandt; the last flame-coloured flash of Spanish genius.
It is impossible to reproduce his colouring ”

“ All these portraits are admirably conceived, in a simple, natural form, without superfluous details, and they are freely painted, in a rich and solid colouring, and stand out from the canvas, substantial, harmonious, pulsing with life, against those vaporous and imponderable backgrounds of which, since Velazquez, Goya alone has found the secret.
At this epoch Goya was not only a celebrated painter, he was also a man of fashion, mingling with persons of the highest rank. ”

“ Yet, in depicting the niece of a high-ranking government official, the artist has given us a marvelously direct and sympathetic portrait. The innate, peculiarly Spanish sense of pride and self-discipline is evident in Sabasa García’s aristocratic posture and bold, unflinching gaze. Equally direct is Goya’s manner of painting, which captures the rough texture of the shawl as well as the gossamer quality of the mantilla lace. The result is a portrait of great intensity heightened by feminine beauty. ”

“ Yet the prints in their intense and vigorous movement show no slackening of artistic power. He died three years later, in 1828, and was buried in the cemetery of Bordeaux. After lying there for seventy-one years, his body was claimed by his country and interred with honors in Madrid. For by this time the modern world of art had recognized Goya’s greatness and its own indebtedness to his genius.
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Goya’s etchings reveal him a great master of design. The versatility of his invention suggests the exuberance of nature, yet calculated art determines each composition. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Such men seem to leave an unhappy impress upon the trees and mountains, and their point of view vulgarizes the blue sky. They may be very brilliant handlers of the brush—indeed they are often excellent craftsmen—but their vision is sadly warped and their minds are tainted. There are, for instance, few workmen more fascinating in craftsmanship than Goya. He could paint beautifully and convincingly, but when you go to Spain and see the mass of his painting you will be surprised at the blood and flame and brutality of it. ”