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A Little Art History

Francisco de Goya 1746-1828

Francisco de Goya was a master painter whose works profoundly influenced audiences and artists throughout the world. His unique perspective was so fresh and original that Goya is considered by many to be the "father" of Modern Art. The majority of his paintings and drawings are renowned for their realistically bold techniques and haunting satire. Goya himself is revered for his affirmation that an artist's vision is vital to the innovation of art.

During his lifetime, Goya was without peer in his native Spain. As a painter, draftsman, and printmaker, he was awarded the prestigious title of "first painter to the king" and served three generations of Spanish royalty. Despite these close ties to the ruling aristocracy, Goya remained an outsider, preferring instead to independently witness the follies and trespasses of humanity, whether at the highest stations of life or at the lowest.

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746 in northern Spain. Not much later, his father moved the family to Saragossa. When he was about 14, Francisco became apprenticed to Jose Luzan, a local painter. A few years later Goya traveled to Madrid, where he was greatly influenced by the last of the great Venetian painters. From here, he traveled to Rome to continue his art studies.

When he returned to Saragossa in 1771, he started painting frescoes for a local cathedral. These works, painted in the decorative Rococo tradition, helped establish Goya's artistic reputation. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, who was the sister of a fellow artist. Although the couple had many children, only one would survive to adulthood.

Goya got his professional start in 1774 when he was commissioned by Mengs to paint cartoons (designs) for the royal tapestry factory in Madrid. This experience helped him develop his first genre of paintings, or scenes from everyday life, as he became an astute observer of human behavior. He was also influenced by Neoclassicism, which was gaining favor over the Rococo style. His study of the works of Velazquez in the royal collection also resulted in a looser, more spontaneous painting technique.

The 1780's brought many professional distinctions for Goya. During this time, he became established as a portrait painter to the Spanish aristocracy. He was elected to the Royal Academy of San Fernando, became a court painter, and was named painter to King Charles III.

In the early 1790's, Goya became seriously ill and was left permanently deaf. Even though King Charles IV later made Goya his official chamber painter, his distaste for the pomposity of the court had already taken root. During this period, he started producing dark and satirical works.

Due to his hearing loss, Goya became increasingly occupied with the fantasies of his imagination that led to critically satirical observations of mankind. From this mindset, he evolved a bolder and freer style that was almost caricature. In 1799 he published the "Caprichos," a series of etchings that satirized the futility of human endeavors.

As he changed, his portraits became penetrating characterizations that revealed their subjects as Goya perceived them. His religious frescoes also displayed a broader, freer style that contained an earthy realism that was unprecedented in contemporary religious art.

During the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish War of independence from 1808 to 1814, Goya served as court painter to the French. He expressed his horror of armed conflict in The Disasters of War, a series of starkly realistic etchings that depicted the atrocities of war. He also produced 2 de Mayo de 1808 (2nd of May of 1808), and other pieces in which he portrayed the suffering and the realism of the time to a level not previously witnessed.

After the war, the Spanish monarchy was restored to power. Goya was pardoned for serving the French, but his work was not favored by the new King Ferdinand VII. He was called before the Inquisition to explain his earlier portrait of The Naked Maja, one of the few nudes in Spanish art at the time. Goya resented this intimidation, and soon after he began his period known as the "Black Paintings."

In the Black Paintings, which were painted on the walls of his house, Goya gave expression to his darkest visions. A similar nightmarish quality haunts the satirical "Disparates," a series of etchings also called "Proverbios." In the same context, he published his etchings on bullfighting (called the "Tauromaquia") in 1816.

After years of having witnessed the excesses of absolute monarchy, Goya went into self-imposed exile in Southern France in 1824. By this time he had become embittered and disillusioned towards society and its apparent myriad deception. He continued to work in the Bordeaux region until his death on April 16, 1828.

Goya's unique ability to find universal and timeless meaning in specific examples of human behavior has inspired successive generations of artists. Goya held particular importance for French painters of the 19th Century, including Delacroix, Manet and Degas; and through them Goya influenced some of the great artists of the 20th Century, such as Pablo Picasso.

This lineage of influence, as well as his seminal vision, have encouraged the popular acknowledgment of Goya as the "first modernist," a label that, while compelling, is limiting for an artist of such mystery and strength. Today, many of Goya's best paintings are displayed in the El Prado art museum in Madrid.

Through July 11, some 35 paintings--several from the artist's personal collection--join astonishing drawings to bring new perspectives to Goya's enduring vision in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (215) 763-8100; www.philamuseum.org.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 9 No. 8 -- June 1999