Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, September 27, 2021: Francisco Goya, a Spanish painter (Romanticism, Rococo) (#1376)

Monday, September 27, 2021

Artist of the Day, September 27, 2021: Francisco Goya, a Spanish painter (Romanticism, Rococo) (#1376)

Francisco Goya, (Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes), (1746-1828) Spanish artist whose paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. The series of etchings The Disasters of War (1810–14) records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion. His masterpieces in painting include The Naked Maja, The Clothed Maja (c. 1800–05), and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Executions” (1814).

Early training and career
Goya began his studies in Zaragoza with José Luzán y Martínez, a local artist trained in Naples, and was later a pupil, in Madrid, of the court painter Francisco Bayeu, whose sister he married in 1773. He went to Italy to continue his studies and was in Rome in 1771. In the same year he returned to Zaragoza, where he obtained his first important commission for frescoes in the cathedral, which he executed at intervals during the next 10 years. These and other early religious paintings made in Zaragoza are in the Baroque-Rococo style then current in Spain and are influenced in particular by the great Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who spent the last years of his life in Madrid (1762–70), where he had been invited to paint ceilings in the royal palace.

Goya’s career at court began in 1775, when he painted the first of a series of more than 60 cartoons (preparatory paintings), on which he was engaged until 1792, for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara. These paintings of scenes of contemporary life, of aristocratic and popular pastimes, were begun under the direction of the German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, a great exponent of Neoclassicism who, after Tiepolo’s death, had become undisputed art dictator at the Spanish court. In Goya’s early cartoons the influence of Tiepolo’s decorative style is modified by the teachings of Mengs, particularly his insistence on simplicity.

In 1780 Goya was elected a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Madrid, his admission piece being a Christ on the Cross, a conventional composition in the manner of Mengs but painted in the naturalistic style of Velázquez’s Christ on the Cross, which he doubtless knew. In 1785 he was appointed deputy director of painting at the Academy and in the following year painter to the king, Charles III. To this decade belong his earliest known portraits of court officials and members of the aristocracy, whom he represented in conventional 18th-century poses.

Period under Charles IV
The death of Charles III in 1788, a few months before the outbreak of the French Revolution, brought to an end the period of comparative prosperity and enlightenment in which Goya reached maturity. The rule of reaction and political and social corruption that followed—under the weak and stupid Charles IV and his clever, unscrupulous queen, Maria Luisa—ended with the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. It was under the patronage of the new king, who raised him at once to the rank of court painter, that Goya became the most successful and fashionable artist in Spain; he was made director of the Academy in 1795 (but resigned two years later for reasons of health) and first court painter in 1799. Though he welcomed official honors and worldly success with undisguised enthusiasm, the record that he left of his patrons and of the society in which he lived is ruthlessly penetrating. After an illness in 1792 that left him permanently deaf, his art began to take on a new character, which gave free expression to the observations of his searching eye and critical mind and to his newly developed faculty of imagination. During his convalescence he painted a set of cabinet pictures said to represent “national diversions,” which he submitted to the Vice Protector of the Academy with a covering letter (1794), saying, “I have succeeded in making observations for which there is normally no opportunity in commissioned works, which give no scope for fantasy and invention.” The set was completed by The Madhouse in 1794, a scene that Goya had witnessed in Zaragoza, painted in a broad, sketchy manner, with an effect of exaggerated realism that borders on caricature. For his more purposeful and serious satires, however, he now began to use the more intimate mediums of drawing and engraving. In Los caprichos, a series of 80 etchings published in 1799, he attacked political, social, and religious abuses, adopting the popular imagery of caricature, which he enriched with highly original qualities of invention. Goya’s masterly use of the recently developed technique of aquatint for tonal effects gives Los caprichos astonishing dramatic vitality and makes them a major achievement in the history of engraving. Despite the veiled language of designs and captions and Goya’s announcement that his themes were from the “extravagances and follies common to all society,” they were probably recognized as references to well-known persons and were withdrawn from sale after a few days. A few months later, however, Goya was made first court painter. Later he was apparently threatened by the Inquisition, and in 1803 he presented the plates of Los caprichos to the king in return for a pension for his son.

While uncommissioned works gave full scope for “observations,” “fantasy,” and “invention,” in his commissioned paintings Goya continued to use conventional formulas. His decoration of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, Madrid (1798), is still in the tradition of Tiepolo; but the bold, free execution and the expressive realism of the popular types used for religious and secular figures are unprecedented. In his numerous portraits of friends and officials a broader technique is combined with a new emphasis on characterization. The faces of his sitters reveal his lively discernment of personality, which is sometimes appreciative, particularly in his portraits of women, such as that of Doña Isabel de Porcel, but which is often far from flattering, as in his royal portraits. In the group of The Family of Charles IV, Goya, despite his position as court painter, has portrayed the ugliness and vulgarity of the principal figures so vividly as to produce the effect of caricature.

The Napoleonic invasion and period after the restoration
In 1808, when Goya was at the height of his official career, Charles IV and his son Ferdinand were forced to abdicate in quick succession, Napoleon’s armies entered Spain, and Napoleon’s brother Joseph was placed on the throne. Goya retained his position as court painter, but in the course of the war he portrayed Spanish as well as French generals, and in 1812 he painted a portrait of The Duke of Wellington. It was, however, in a series of etchings, The Disasters of War (first published 1863), for which he made drawings during the war, that he recorded his reactions to the invasion and to the horrors and disastrous consequences of the war. The violent and tragic events, which he doubtless witnessed, are represented not with documentary realism but in dramatic compositions—in line and aquatint—with brutal details that create a vivid effect of authenticity.

On the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814, after the expulsion of the invaders, Goya was pardoned for having served the French king and reinstated as first court painter. The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Fight of the Mamelukes” and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Executions” were painted to commemorate the popular insurrection in Madrid. Like The Disasters, they are compositions of dramatic realism, and their monumental scale makes them even more moving. The impressionistic style in which they are painted foreshadowed and influenced later 19th-century French artists, particularly Édouard Manet, who was also inspired by the composition of The 3rd of May. In several portraits of Ferdinand VII, painted after his restoration, Goya evoked—more forcefully than any description—the personality of the cruel tyrant, whose oppressive rule drove most of his friends and eventually Goya himself into exile. He painted few other official portraits, but those of his friends and relations and his Self-Portraits (1815) are equally subjective. Some of his religious compositions of this period, the Agony in the Garden and The Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz (1819), are more suggestive of sincere devotion than any of his earlier church paintings. The enigmatic “black paintings” with which he decorated the walls of his country house, the Quinta del Sordo (1820–23) and Los proverbios or Los disparates, a series of etchings made at about the same time (though not published until 1864), are, on the other hand, nightmare visions in expressionist language that seem to reflect cynicism, pessimism, and despair.

Last years
In 1824, when the failure of an attempt to establish a liberal government had led to renewed persecution, Goya applied for permission to go to France for reasons of health. After visiting Paris he settled in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, where he remained, apart from a brief trip to Madrid, until his death. There, in spite of old age and infirmity, he continued to record his impressions of the world around him in paintings, drawings, and the new technique of lithography, which he had begun to use in Spain. His last paintings include genre subjects and several portraits of friends in exile: Don Juan Bautista de Muguiro, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, and Don José Pío de Molina, which show the final development of his style toward a synthesis of form and character in terms of light and shade, without outline or detail and with a minimum of color.

Legacy
Though there is little evidence for the legends of Goya’s rebellious character and violent actions, he was undoubtedly a revolutionary artist. His enormous and varied production of paintings, drawings, and engravings, relating to nearly every aspect of contemporary life, reflects the period of political and social upheavals in which he lived. He had no immediate followers, but his many original achievements profoundly impressed later 19th-century French artists—Eugène Delacroix was one of his great admirers—who were the leaders of new European movements, from Romanticism and Realism to Impressionism; and his works continued to be admired and studied by the Expressionists, Surrealists, and others in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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