FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES
ByCHARLES H. CAFFIN
Author of “The Story of Spanish Painting,” “Old SpanishMasters, Engraved by Timothy Cole,” etc., etc.
THE phenomenon of Goya is among the curiosities of the history of art. For in the latter half of the eighteenth century, when, under the feeble Bourbon dynasty, Spain had reached the lowest ebb of her national and artistic life, an artist arose who represented more than any other her racial characteristics and was destined to exert a world-wide influence on the art of the succeeding century.
While the rest of Europe was seething with the spirit of revolution, Goya, the man, was already in revolt, and at the same time had discovered for himself a revolutionary form of art, which anticipated by half a century the consciousness elsewhere of the need of a new method to fit the new point of view. In a word, he drove an entering wedge into the contemporary classicalism that was based upon a dry imitation of Roman marbles and Raphaelesque compositions, restored nature to art, and adapted his vision of nature to the spirit of inquiry, observation, and research that was in process of fermentation. Finally, he adjusted to his vision of life a method of composition, freer and more flexible than the older ones: that was preoccupied less with the representationof form than with the expression of movement and character; its aim, in fact, being primarily expressional. Thus he anticipated the motive of modern impressionism and determined in advance the methods of rendering it.
No less remarkable is the degree in which he was an avatar of the mingled traits of his race. For ethnologically the Spaniard is a Celt, who first was disciplined by Roman civilization, then merged in the flood of a Germanic wave, and later infused with the blood and culture of the Arab and the Moor. A truly wonderful amalgam—the ironic humor of the Celt; the mysticism, vigor, and grotesque imagination of the forest-bred Goth; the subtle inventiveness, sensuousness, and abstraction of the Orient, and the uncouth strain of the Black Man, whom to-day we are discovering to be the flotsam of a far-off submerged civilization in Darkest Africa. All these traits are recognizable in the work of Goya that he did to please himself: namely, in his painted figure-subjects, other than portraits, and in his drawings and etchings.
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Goya. Portrait of Goya, drawn and etched by himselfSize of the original etching, 5⁵⁄₁₆ × 4⅞ inches
Goya. Portrait of Goya, drawn and etched by himself
Size of the original etching, 5⁵⁄₁₆ × 4⅞ inches
Goya. The Dead BranchFrom “The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 126)A reference to the Spanish court, which rests on a dead branch over an abyssSize of the original etching, 8⅜ × 12⁹⁄₁₆ inches
Goya. The Dead Branch
From “The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 126)A reference to the Spanish court, which rests on a dead branch over an abyss
Size of the original etching, 8⅜ × 12⁹⁄₁₆ inches
In the modern craze for making over biographies of past worthies, so as to bring their lives into conformity with the standards of respectability in the present, there is a tendency to suggest that many of the records of Goya’s career may be apocryphal. This would rob the story of art of a very picturesque personality; one, moreover, which seems to be quite convincingly represented in his art. He was born in 1746, in the little town of Fuendetodos near Zaragoza in the province of Aragón, his father being a smallfarmer. Reared among the hills, he breathed independence, throve mightily in bodily vigor, and proved precociously disposed to art. Accordingly, at the age of fourteen he was put under a teacher, Luzan, in Zaragoza. But it was never Goya’s way to take instruction from a spoon, and at this period he distinguished himself less as a student than as a roistering young fellow, apt for gallantry and brawls and ready with his rapier. Having drawn on himself the attention of the authorities of the Inquisition, he found it convenient to proceed to Madrid. Here again his escapades aroused notoriety, so that he abandoned the capital and set forth for Rome, working his way to the sea-board by practising as a bull-fighter. In Rome he mainly nourished his artistic development by observation of the old masterpieces, meanwhile indulging in gallantries, which culminated in a plot to rescue a young lady from a convent. This time he found himself actually in the grip of the Inquisition and was only released from it by the Spanish ambassador, who undertook to ship him back to Spain. Arrived the second time in Madrid he found a friend in the painter Francisco Bayeu, who gave him his daughter, Josefa, in marriage and introduced him to Mengs, the arbiter of art at Court. Josefa bore him twenty children, none of whom survived him, and patiently put up with his infidelities. Mengs had been urged by the king, Charles III, to revive the Tapestry Works of Santa Barbara, and intrusted Goya with a series of designs, which to-day may be seen in the basement galleries of the Prado, while some of them, executed in the weave, adorn the walls of a room in the Escoriál. The vogue at the time was for Boucher’s pretty pastoralineptitudes, but Goya took a hint from Teniers and represented the actual pastimes of the Spanish people. He, however, far outstripped the Flemish artist in the variety, naturalness, and vivacity of his subjects, while in the matter of composition he showed himself already a student of the harmonies of nature rather than a perpetuator of studio traditions.
These designs secured his general popularity and paved the way for hisentréeinto royal favor at the accession of Charles IV in 1788. Goya, turned forty, was already the darling of the populace and now became the cynosure of the Court. He would pit his prowess against the professional strong man in the streets of Madrid and plunged with equal aplomb and assurance into the gallantries of the royal circle, which was a hotbed of intrigue under the lax régime of Queen Maria Luisa, whose amours were notorious. Foremost among her lovers was Manuel Godoy, whom she raised from the rank of a guardsman eventually to be prime minister. He embroiled his country in a war with England, and finally ratted to Napoleon, conniving at the invasion of the French troops and the placing of Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. Meanwhile, in the interval before thisdébâcle, Goya, while dipping into intrigue, notably with the beautiful Countess of Alba, and establishing his position as an artist to whom every one who would be anybody must sit for a portrait, maintained an attitude of haughty mental exclusiveness. He was the rebel, the insurgent, the nihilist; lashing with the impartial whip of his satire the rottenness of the Court and the shams and hypocrisies of the Middle Class, the Church, Law, Medicine, and even Painting.Also, like many devotees of sensual pleasures, he was hot in his denunciation of lust, a terrible exponent of its consequences in satiety and sapped vitality.
Goya. Back to His Ancestors!“Poor animal! The genealogists and the kings of heraldry have muddled his brain, and he is not the only one.”Manuel Godoy, satirized in this print, had a long and fictitious genealogy made for himself, according to which he was a direct descendant of the ancient Gothic kings of Spain.From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 39).
Goya. Back to His Ancestors!
“Poor animal! The genealogists and the kings of heraldry have muddled his brain, and he is not the only one.”Manuel Godoy, satirized in this print, had a long and fictitious genealogy made for himself, according to which he was a direct descendant of the ancient Gothic kings of Spain.
From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 39).
Goya.“Birds of a Feather Flock Together”“The question is often raised whether men or women are superior. The vices of either proceed from bad upbringing; where the men are depraved the women likewise are depraved.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 5).
Goya.“Birds of a Feather Flock Together”
“The question is often raised whether men or women are superior. The vices of either proceed from bad upbringing; where the men are depraved the women likewise are depraved.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 5).
This last is the theme of one of his most horribly arresting subjects in oils, an allegory of the Fates, wherein lust and its accompanying exhaustion represent the futility of man’s existence. It is painted in colors of extreme neutrality that almost amount to monochrome. Thus it illustrates a dictum of Goya’s that color no more than line exists in nature; there are only differences of light and shade. It accordingly prepares one for an appreciation of his etchings, in which aquatint plays so intrinsically important a rôle. As a painter he had begun with positive hues—to abandon them, as soon as he reached his maturity, for a sparing use of color and a liberal differentiation of color values. In this he was following Velasquez, whom he admitted to be one of his teachers, the others being Rembrandt and nature. It was Rembrandt, unquestionably, who helped him to a vision of nature that reduced itself to the principle of light and dark; but from nature herself he gained corroboration of the essential truth of such a vision. How true it is the artist of the present day has learned from Goya. Like the latter, he sees color in nature not as positive hues, but as a complex weave of varying intensities of light and shade that play over and transform the hues. It is by the correlation of these varying values that he builds up the structure and secures the planes of his composition, and realizes a unity and harmony ofensemble. And it is in Goya’s etchings that he finds these principles of color in relation to composition represented with most adequate reliance on simplification,organization, and expression—the three watchwords of contemporary artists who are working in the latest modern spirit.
Expression is the keynote of Goya’s etchings, as it is of his paintings. It is the quality of feeling rather than of seeing that is interpreted. Thus, in the oil painting of theMaja,Nude, it was Goya’s intent not so much to represent the young form as to interpret the expression of its youth through the play of light and shadow on the supple torso and limbs; an expression so exquisitely subtle and tender that it defies the copyist’s attempted imitation and eludes the resources of photographic reproduction. Similarly, in the splendid impressionism of the group-portrait of Charles IV and his family it is not the appearance of the jewels, clustered on the breasts of the royal pair, but the effect of their luster that he designed to render. And so throughout his drawings and etchings the prime purpose is not to represent the thing seen but to suggest its effect upon the feelings.
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Goya’s etched work, as catalogued in 1907 by Julius Hofmann, comprises 268 pieces. These include 22 Various Subjects; 16 Studies after Velasquez; 83 Caprices; 21 Proverbs; 82 Disasters of War and 44 Tauromachies, or Scenes from the Bull-Fight. To this list of engraved work are to be added 20 lithographs.
The best known of these groups isLos Caprichos, etched in 1794-1798 but not published until 1803. TheseCapricesrepresent the most spontaneous expression of Goya’s temperament and of his attitude toward the life and the society of his day. At thesame time, the designs, as in the case of all his etchings and lithographs, were executed with due deliberation, worked out previously in drawings in which every effect was carefully calculated and assured. With corresponding fidelity the drawings were copied on the plate.
Goya. They have Kidnapped Her“The woman who does not know how to guard herself is the first to be attacked. And it is only when there is no longer time to protect herself that she is astonished that she was carried off.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 8).
Goya. They have Kidnapped Her
“The woman who does not know how to guard herself is the first to be attacked. And it is only when there is no longer time to protect herself that she is astonished that she was carried off.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 8).
Goya.“Bon Voyage!”“Where go they across the shadows, this infernal cohort which makes the air ring with their cries? If only there were daylight— ... Then it would be another thing: because with a gun we could bring them down.... But it is night and nobody can see them.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 64).
Goya.“Bon Voyage!”
“Where go they across the shadows, this infernal cohort which makes the air ring with their cries? If only there were daylight— ... Then it would be another thing: because with a gun we could bring them down.... But it is night and nobody can see them.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 64).
It is in this set that the creative quality of Goya’s imagination is most demonstrated. He could not only summon visions from the void, but clothe them in convincing shape. Whether he stretched some human type to the limit of caricature or invested it with attributes of bird, beast, or reptile, or used some familiar form of animal, or created a hybrid monster, he had the faculty of giving it an actuality that makes it seem reasonable. As to the meaning of the subjects, the titles which he himself gave them furnish, except in a few instances, an intelligible clue. Prints of this set were brought to England by officers engaged in the Peninsular War and later found their way to Paris and exercised a very conscious influence upon Delacroix. For they not only echoed the turbulence of his own spirit, but helped him to give expression to his own visions of the horrible and fantastic. The best proofs are those of the first edition, many of which were pulled by the artist himself.
The Proverbs, although engraved between 1800 and 1810, were not published until 1850. While their subjects are often difficult to comprehend, they show generally a marked technical advance over the previous work. This is apparent not only in the character of the drawing, but also in the increased simplification and more highly organized arrangement of the composition. Some of the latter, as for example in the caseofThe Infuriated StallionandThe Bird-Men, present designs of extraordinary distinction.
The last prints ofLa Tauromachieare dated 1815. This series falls short of the others in esthetic interest, being more conspicuously illustrative. It was, indeed, designed to represent the various phases through which the baiting of bulls in Spain had passed. Beginning with the early hunting of the bull in the open country, both on horseback and on foot, it proceeds to the methods introduced by the Moors, who are represented in the attire of Turks. Thence it gradually traces the development of a precise science and technique in the management of the sport and incidentally commemorates the prowess of individual bull-fighters, beginning with the Emperor Charles V, and passing to well-known professional toreadors. Contemporary proofs of Goya are very rare; and it was not until 1855 that a complete set was published in Madrid. A later issue, including seven extra prints, was published by Loizelet in Paris.
Goya. The Infuriated Stallion“The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 133)Size of the original etching, 8⅜ × 12½ inches
Goya. The Infuriated Stallion
“The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 133)Size of the original etching, 8⅜ × 12½ inches
Goya. The Bird-MenFrom “The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 136)Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches
Goya. The Bird-Men
From “The Proverbs” (Lefort No. 136)Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches
Of theDisasters of Warno prints exist prior to those of the set published by the Academy of San Fernando in 1863. Etched during 1810 and the succeeding years of the Peninsular War, theDisastersare regarded as the finest products of Goya’s needle. Yet he was sixty-four years old when he commenced them. Though he had subscribed to the Bonaparte régime and still held the position of Court painter, he lived apart from active affairs in the seclusion of his country home. The prints are inspired by his country’s sufferings, but he did not publish them. To do so would have been to raise a protest against the crime of the French invasion and to stir his countrymen toincreased patriotism. Under the circumstances of his equivocal position Goya may have thought such a course impolitic. Perhaps he felt the national condition to be hopeless. At any rate, he closed himself around in an atmosphere of profound pessimism. “Was it for this they were born?” is the legend beneath one of the prints which shows a heap of mangled corpses. It is the note of the whole series—the criminal horror of war, and its futility. Nowhere else is the element of themacabrein his genius more fully revealed. The designs are in no sense illustrative; they are visions of his own brooding, projected against darkness and emptiness. Yet, just as in theCapriceshe gave bone and flesh to the eery fabrics of his imagination, so by the magic of his needle his abstract imaginings of the enormity of war became visualized into concrete actuality.
Of Goya’s lithographs it must suffice here to mention the set of four prints,The Bulls of Bordeaux. They were executed in that city in 1825. For after the expulsion of the French by Wellington and the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of Ferdinand VII, Goya again turned his coat. “For your treason you deserve to be hanged,” remarked the new king, “but you are a great artist and I overlook the past.” He was reappointed Court painter; but, broken in health and spirits, so deaf that he could no longer indulge his musical taste in playing, he obtained the king’s permission to retire to Bordeaux, where he was cared for by a Madame Weiss and her daughter. It was during this time that he visited Paris and was enthusiastically welcomed by Delacroix and the other Romanticists. When he drewThe Bullsof Bordeauxhe was in his seventy-ninth year and able to work only with the aid of a powerful magnifying-glass. 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. It is architectonic, organic, functional; possessing the quality of a built-up structure, with perfect correlation of its parts and absolute adjustment of means to end. Moreover, it carries the final mark of distinction in that it appears to have grown: it has the vitality, movement, and character of a living organism. It is discovered to be the product of a new mating of nature and geometry, inspired by a wider and more penetrating observation of the former and a more extended and imaginative use of the latter. Hence, at times it strangely anticipates what we are now familiar with in Oriental composition.
Most remarkable also is the plastic quality, which is realized not only in theensemblebut also in the component parts. Goya’s compositions are no mere patterning of surfaces, but an example of actual space-filling, in the true sense that they occupy the third dimension. The substance of his forms and theirposition in space are so concretely realized that they most actively excite the tactile sense. And yet, for all their concreteness, they are permeated with a quality of abstraction. Thus they fascinate alike by their actuality and their suggestion of a vision. They are frequently hideous, but in their capacity of sense-enhancement and in their stimulus to the esthetic intellectuality they are beautiful.
Goya. Good Advice“And this advice is worthy of her who gives it. Worse yet is the damsel who follows it to the letter, and misfortune to the first one who accosts her!”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 15).
Goya. Good Advice
“And this advice is worthy of her who gives it. Worse yet is the damsel who follows it to the letter, and misfortune to the first one who accosts her!”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 15).
Goya. God Forgive Her—It’s Her Own Mother!“The damsel while young left her native land, served her apprenticeship in Cadiz, and is now returned to Madrid. She has drawn a prize in the lottery, goes one day to the Prado, and is accosted by an old and decrepit beggar—she repulses her; the beggar woman insists. The beauty turns and recognizes her—this poor old woman is her mother.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 16).
Goya. God Forgive Her—It’s Her Own Mother!
“The damsel while young left her native land, served her apprenticeship in Cadiz, and is now returned to Madrid. She has drawn a prize in the lottery, goes one day to the Prado, and is accosted by an old and decrepit beggar—she repulses her; the beggar woman insists. The beauty turns and recognizes her—this poor old woman is her mother.”From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 16).
And the beauty of these compositions is materially increased by the sense of color which they suggest. In consequence of Goya’s influence aquatint is coming largely into vogue with modern etchers; but he with this process, and his contemporary, Turner, with mezzotint, were the first to explore fully the resources of tint in combination with line. The English artist, however, used it mainly as a convenient method of representation. In Goya’s hand it became a medium of intellectual and emotional expression, comparable to tone in music. Goya, in fact, by his study of nature, advanced the circle of his art, so that, on the one hand, it embraced more of the universal geometry and, on the other, intersected more freely the circles of the other arts. Thus he anticipated the latest modern thought, in its consciousness of the essential unity of the arts and of the essential unity of art with life.