Goya

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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 arts and had himself some little skill in drawing. Becoming interested, he drew nearer, and was amazed at the aptitude shown by the boy. Upon questioning him, he was much pleased with his replies and was completely won by his engaging manners. Without further reflection, he inquired the way to the home of the lad’s parents, poor peasants of the immediate neighbourhood, and had no difficulty in persuading them to entrust their son to him, promising to make him a painter of whom they would some day be proud.

History has not preserved the name of the worthy monk so kindly disposed to art, but the boy was destined to make his own name illustrious: Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, the poor son of farming folk of Saragossa, fulfilled the promises of his patron. He had talent; better yet, he had genius; he fraternized with princes and with kings, and the renown of his glory restored its lost dignity to the art of Spain and did honour to painting throughout the world.

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. One only in all their number, a certain Claudio Coello, mustered sufficient energy to attempt to carry on the broken tradition. 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 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. Politics, customs, traditions, popular taste, all bore the imprint of that degeneracy which heralds the end of a race. What could a Claudio Coello do in a society that had disintegrated to such a degree? His strength seemed too brutal, his realism was accused of barbarity, and the conscientiousness of his line-work caused him to be considered as a painter who had become old-fashioned and had fallen behind his times. All the favour of that period was bestowed upon the fa presto school of painting. Luca Giordano, who usurped Coello’s place in the regard of Philip II., had begun to inundate Spain with his facile and spiritless productions. He covered the walls of the Escurial with frescoes brushed in with a turn of the wrist, the dexterity of which ill concealed their absolute lack of inspiration. In his wake a swarm of Neapolitan painters, equally dexterous, but of even less worth, swooped down upon the peninsula, and day by day still further perverted the standard of popular taste. With the dawn of the seventeenth century the decadence, instead of diminishing, became more accentuated. The Neapolitans had been succeeded by Frenchmen—but what Frenchmen! Their art had neither the nobility of Poussin, nor the greatness of Le Brun, nor the suavity of Le Sueur; they bore such names as Ranc, Hovasse, Louis and Michel Vanloo, and their manner drew its inspiration from the worst type of composition brought into fashion by Mignard. Their whole effort was confined to producing the merely pretty, and their tastelessness was absolutely, yet regrettably, adapted to the growing affectation of the century. After them came the turn of the Tiepolos: these latter were not merely remarkable virtuosos of the palette; their prodigious facility was frequently ennobled by genuine talent; their line-work, though too often slighted, still showed a certain degree of conscientiousness, and some of their works are really worthy of admiration. But they too were infected with the malady of the century; they sacrificed themselves to the taste of their day, which was definitely degraded to the extravagances of fashion and the frivolities of gallantry. They were wholly lacking in the ability to impart to this type of painting the vivacious charm which the graceful and smiling ease of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher bestowed upon it in France. There was no ground for hoping that they would ever effect a renaissance of the Spanish school.

Finally Charles III. summoned to Madrid a painter of German origin, Mengs by name, who at that time was regarded as the Messiah of an art which was destined to unite “the grace of Apelles, the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colouring of Titian!” Unusually gifted though he was, Mengs did not possess the necessary calibre to fulfil such brilliant promises. Haunted by the great compositions of Le Brun, he confined himself to the mythological order of painting and drew his inspiration from his illustrious model, without ever achieving an equal eminence or duplicating the latter’s admirable skill in composition. 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.

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 Zurbaran. He has their ardour, their vehemence, their passionate love for nature; like them, he finds the source of his strength in direct observation; as with them, the secret of his genius resides in that inner flame which bursts out of bounds in blazing flashes, with no clever trickery, no premeditation, but with that spontaneity which is born only of a clear vision, aided by a vigorous brush.

Nevertheless, this descendant of bygone masters is the most modern of all Spanish painters. 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, the toreros, all the popular types; and one and all, as he pictures them, are spirited, life-like, entertaining, and well grouped, standing out boldly against their background of spreading fields, or bathing gaily in the violent clarity of the sunshine of Castile.

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.

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Francisco José Goya was born at Fuendetodos, in the province of Aragon, on the 13th of March, 1746. His father, José Goya, and his mother, Gracia Lucientes, were humble peasants and lived upon the product of the sluggish fields that surrounded their modest home. What the childhood of José was, we do not know, for his biographers are silent upon this point. They content themselves with saying that he aided his parents in the daily round of tasks upon the farm. As to his education, it was certainly that of all the young peasant boys of the Spanish farming districts. The child must have acquired the first rudiments from the village priest, or perhaps from the monks of the nearest convent. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic made up the whole equipment that young José possessed at the age of fifteen. How his taste for drawing was first born, what occurrence or what object awakened his artistic instinct, we do not know. Perhaps, like so many others, he became suddenly conscious of his vocation at the sight of some of those cruel and violent pictures representing scenes of the Passion, such as abound in Spanish churches, and it is not unlikely that his youthful soul received a profound and lasting impression.

However this may be, at the age of fifteen Goya could handle his pencil with sufficient assurance to astonish the worthy monk of Saragossa, who was a judge of such matters. The latter conducted his young protégé to the city, and a few days later entered him as a pupil in the studio of Don José Lujan Martinez.

This Lujan was a Saragossan by birth, but he had studied painting in Naples under the guidance of Mastréolo. Possessing considerable talent, he enjoyed a great reputation in his native city. Upon his return from Italy, he had founded a free school of design, a sort of academy which was maintained wholly by his own contributions, both of money and of time.

Among the artists who were trained in this studio, there were some who left names highly esteemed in Spain: Beraton, Vallespin, Antonio Martinez the goldsmith, and Francisco Bayeu de Subias. With the last named of this group Goya formed a particular attachment, notwithstanding that Bayeu was twelve years the elder.

Goya remained in Lujan’s studio for between four and five years. His fiery and impulsive temperament had already begun to declare itself, and his master did not always succeed in moderating his exuberance. He manifested an extraordinary diligence in his work, he was enamoured of his art, and showed exceptional aptitude for it. From the first months he became the most interesting feature in the studio; his imagination, his enthusiasm, his assurance often surprised his master and stupefied his comrades, who were accustomed to a calmer and less violent manner of painting. At this epoch his character was already beginning to form; one could foresee in him the man that he was destined to be throughout his life. He was no less ardent in his pleasures than in his work. He was the true type of the hot-headed Aragonais, and at the age of nineteen revealed himself, headstrong, turbulent, a born fighter. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the battles that occurred so frequently at that time throughout Aragon between the young men of the different parishes. Uniting in rival gangs, fiercely jealous of one another, they were always ready on holiday evenings to settle some question of superiority, and any excuse for an encounter was welcomed by them. More than once, for the greater honour of San Luis or of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the club and knife scattered blood over the streets and suburbs of Saragossa.

Goya took part in all these battles, flung himself into them, body and soul, tumultuously aiding and abetting this hazardous and adventurous mode of life, which had the flavour of romantic fiction. In the course of one of these collisions, three young men belonging to the rival faction were left stiff and stark on the battle-ground. Goya, who was one of those most directly implicated in the affair, was warned that the Inquisition intended to arrest him. Although it no longer possessed the terrible power of earlier times, the Inquisition was even then by no means light-handed, and there was still serious danger in bringing oneself under its notice. Goya was well aware of this, and he did not wait for the arrival of the alguazils. That same night he left the city and wended his way to Madrid, which, as it happened, it had long been his dream to visit.

In Madrid he once more ran across his friend Bayeu, who had been living there for the past two years. Bayeu was drawing a pension from the academy of San Fernando, and he also had the good luck of being favoured by Mengs, the all powerful Superintendent of Fine-Arts, who had asked him to collaborate in his great task of decorating the royal palace.

Bayeu welcomed his young comrade with open arms and invited him to have a share in his present work. But we must infer that Mengs’s technique and method of teaching were already displeasing to Goya, for he courteously declined the offer. In any case, he had not come to Madrid in search of employment, but for the purpose of continuing his education. All day long he visited the artistic marvels of the capital, made the rounds of churches and convents, studied the old masters, executed copies, and even penetrated into the royal dwellings in order to admire the works of art which they contained, observing extensively, reflecting, comparing, and, in a word, equipping his profound intelligence with precious material for the future. But in Madrid, just as in Saragossa, work was not allowed to interfere with his pleasures. He was always to be found in quest of adventure; he roamed the streets, sword under cape and guitar in hand, serenading the sparkling black eyes that looked down laughingly at him from the ambush of their window-blinds, and stirring husbands to a jealous fury; or again, breaking the peace with a crowd of boisterous companions; or still again, scaling the balcony of his latest conquest, “and thus playing the prelude to that reputation of an audacious, swash-buckling Don Juan, which later was destined to earn him, even among the lower classes, an incredible notoriety.”

At this period Goya was a young man of haughty presence, somewhat below the average stature, but exceedingly well proportioned. Although his features lacked regularity, his face was attractive. It had a pleasant air of joviality and frankness; there was a sparkle to his eye and a lurking spirit of mischief around his lips. He had, furthermore, an affable manner, an unabashed assurance, a mad bravado, and the impudence of a lackey. Thanks to the friends whom he had gained, he was favourably received by a goodly number of distinguished families, where the charm of his personality played havoc with the hearts of the women.

This agreeable pastime could not fail to entail its own dangers, as Goya was not long in learning by experience. On a certain fine evening, when he had doubtless been lurking beneath some balcony, he was picked up in an obscure side street, where he lay stretched at full length, with a gaping poignard thrust in his back. It was necessary to keep him hidden for a time, in order to protect him from the unwelcome curiosity of the police; and later, when the affair had become noised abroad, he was forced to quit Madrid, just as he had quitted Saragossa, clandestinely, without even waiting for his wound to be completely healed.

In order to give his escapade a chance to be forgotten, Goya, who for some time past had desired to visit Italy, set sail, with Rome for his destination.

From the moment of his arrival he came fully under the spell of the marvels accumulated in the Eternal City. 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 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. There, beyond question, was the ideal opportunity for study; and in the presence of those celebrated canvases he absolutely forgot himself; he analyzed their intimate beauties, compared the styles and colour schemes of the different schools, scrutinized their methods, and forced himself to penetrate and understand them. He did not attempt to copy a single one of them; he felt that he would gain nothing by doing so, but that on the contrary he might lose. 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. As a matter of fact, his talent owes nothing, or practically nothing, to the art of Italy.

During his sojourn in Rome, Goya came in contact with David. Curious phenomenon; these two natures who were so different in character and temperament, and whose artistic tastes were almost antagonistic, felt themselves invincibly attracted towards each other. It is true that they both shared to an equal degree the philosophic ideas of the period, and that they had the same ideal; namely, the liberation of the people. They were destined later, each in his own country, to be caught in the full whirlwind of the Revolution; and these mutual ties, divined rather than expressed, created between David and Goya an undying friendship. Because they liked each other, they appreciated each other’s work, in spite of the divergence between their talents; and Goya, even in extreme old age, always spoke with emotion of the “great David.”

In Rome, as in Madrid, Goya was not long in distinguishing himself by perilous escapades. Señor Carderera relates that at one time “He carved his name with his knife on the lantern of Michelangelo’s cupola, on a corner of a certain stone which not one of the artists, German, English, or French, who had preceded him in the mad ascent, had succeeded in reaching; and on another day he made the circuit of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, barely supporting himself upon the narrow projection of the cornice.”

But these were merely childish pranks; before long he had involved himself in a far more dangerous adventure, especially in the city of the Popes. He had become infatuated with a young girl in the higher circles of Roman society, and formed the project of eloping with her. Being warned in time, the parents placed their daughter beyond his reach, within the austere shelter of a convent. This setback, however, was not sufficient to discourage the gallant artist, it only spurred him on to bolder ventures. He resolved to snatch his fair lady from the very hands of her jailors, and one night he attempted to invade the convent itself. But he was captured and handed over to justice. In order to extricate himself from this awkward dilemma, far more awkward at Rome than it would have been anywhere else, he was forced to appeal to the Spanish ambassador, who intervened and demanded his surrender by the Holy See. Goya was restored to liberty, but on condition that he should take immediate leave of Rome.

He now returned to Saragossa, for the sake of his aged parents, with whom he spent the closing months of the year 1774, after which he once more set forth for Madrid. 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 this period exerted over Spanish art and the singular direction in which he had guided it. In the decorative works which he was conducting in the palaces at Madrid and Aranjuez, there was, in the words of M. Charles Yriarte, “nothing but an agglomeration of struggles of Titans, apotheoses, triumphs of Hercules, and glorifications of Ceres; but Goya soon came to scale Olympus, and turn Venus into a manola, and substitute his frightful Saturn devouring his Children, in his Quinta [Goya’s country house], for the figure of Father Time, with his traditional stooping shoulders, partaking of his progeny with prudence and circumspection.”

Up to this moment Goya had been far more intent upon observing and learning than upon painting; he had as yet produced nothing, and no one even suspected the powerful faculties that were dormant in him. More as a favour to Bayeu than from any personal confidence, Mengs entrusted him with the composition of some cartoons for the royal manufactory of Santa Barbara. Goya set to work, and from the start broke squarely away from the superannuated tradition of the Superintendent. Throwing aside the entire paraphernalia of mythology, he confined his cartoons wholly to subjects borrowed from national life. In this work he gave free rein to the full spontaneity of his talent and to his riotous imagination, and in the course of it he revealed the full wealth of his imagination and his marvellous instinct for decorative art. The result was a revelation: a genuine ovation greeted these modern compositions, so full of life and movement and colour. Mengs himself, who was not lacking either in intelligence or in taste, was frankly delighted and warmly congratulated the young artist. At Court and in the city nothing was talked of but Goya and his cartoons; from this moment he entered upon his true role as national painter.

This first attempt had the result of enlightening Goya as to his own powers. Not that he had previously mistrusted them, but he had feared that he was not yet sufficiently equipped to venture upon a public appearance. But on the strength of the success of his cartoons he took stock of himself as follows: “He was thirty years of age and he realized now that he had only to take his brush in hand in order to become a great painter.”

Henceforth, throughout a period of more than fifty years, he was destined to produce unweariedly, trying his hand at the most diverse types, alternating between painting and engraving; and in his life-work, which, taken as a whole, is one of the vastest and most varied that ever came from any artist, he has given us the measure of his prodigious fecundity.

He made his debut in genre painting, and he drew his inspiration straight from the life of the people. Spain, for that matter, furnished an exceptional nutriment for his order of talent; land that it was of vivid light, ardent colour, picturesque manners and curious costumes, it was well designed to fire that vigorous and impulsive nature to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. And hence, while Madrid looked on and marvelled, there came in swift succession from his brush a whole series of pictures saturated with local colour: bull fights, attacks of bandits, clandestine meetings, processions, masquerades, all the life of the Spanish city and the Spanish highway, reproduced in piquant, accurate, brightly coloured scenes, of charming naïveté and exquisite naturalness, replete with vivacity and riotous fancy.

On closer inspection it would be easy to find a certain amount of incorrectness in the drawing. Some of his bulls, especially, are endowed with anatomical proportions that at best only approximate the truth. But they have such spirit, such vigour, such nimbleness, such furious agility, that we feel ourselves snatched up and borne along by this living whirlwind, this intensity of movement, almost as though we were bodily present in the arena where the blood-stained drama is in the course of enactment. As to the colouring, it is very light and very luminous and silvery.

Almost at the same period Goya published a collection of etchings in which he had reproduced the most celebrated masterpieces of Velazquez. It was a daring venture, but it had no terrors for the young artist. Goya did no injustice to Velazquez; he succeeded most felicitously in reproducing in these etchings not only the design, but the colour values and characteristic spirit of his model. This magnificent series, executed during the year 1778, comprises sixteen pieces, which to-day are of inestimable value.

That same year the Franciscans went to great expense to decorate their church; they appealed to the most renowned artists which Madrid at that period possessed. Goya was entrusted with the decoration of a chapel which required two paintings. The subjects specified were a Christ on the Cross and a St. Francis Preaching. The Christ on the Cross is distinguished by a very fine religious spirit, enhanced by its admirable drawing and by a dignity quite its own. The fine and delicate modelling suggests comparison with the most perfect works of Italy; and the whole painting is overspread with an infinitely light surface coat of colour, very luminous and very pale.

This canvas is the best of all Goya’s religious works. On the contrary, his St. Francis Preaching in no way deserved the vogue which it enjoyed at the time, both at Court and in the city circles. Its heavy composition, pretentious and ill balanced, did no credit to any of Goya’s qualities, save that of colourist, in which respect he was always interesting.

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 slow product of their uninspired toil. In order to belittle him, they censured the incorrectness of his drawing and the violent character of his subjects. But public opinion triumphed over this dead weight of malevolence. However reluctantly, the Academy of Saint-Marc welcomed him among its members on the seventh of May, 1780, hailing him as “academician by merit.”

A few months later the Chapter of Nuestra Señora del Pilar at Saragossa decided to have its sanctuary decorated and instituted a competition among the leading artists of Spain, under the direction of Goya’s brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu. Goya decided to compete, and one of the vaults, with its adjacent panels, was assigned to him. The sketches which he submitted were only half satisfactory, and the Chapter requested him to modify them. Goya took the criticisms in ill part, imputing them, whether rightly or wrongly, to his brother-in-law’s jealousy, and refused in any way to modify his designs. A bitter quarrel might have resulted, if mutual friends had not intervened to reconcile the two artists. Finally, Goya agreed to make certain concessions; the vault was entrusted to him, and he forthwith commenced the execution of his frescoes.

The subject chosen represented The Virgin and the Martyred Saints in their Glory. 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. As often as Goya attempted religious painting, the result showed the same general order of deficiencies, because he always treated his subjects solely as a painter, and not, after the manner of Raphael and Correggio, as a devout believer.

Furthermore, the ideal was not in his line; the dominant note of his talent, before all else, was naturalism. Genre painter by temperament, he sought by preference for the picturesque aspect of his subjects. Owing to these conditions, his frescoes at Saragossa and in general all his large religious compositions are in reality nothing else than vast genre paintings.

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At the same time that he was painting his frescoes and his scenes of popular life, Goya also tried his skill at portraiture. In this branch of his art his success was immediate and complete. From his very first attempts he attained the highest possible reputation. From morning till night he saw his studio besieged by all the most distinguished figures in the society of the Court and the city. It soon became the fashion, the rage, to have oneself painted by Goya. They stood in line at his door; they brought all sorts of influence to bear to obtain the favour of a sitting. All the celebrities of the period, poets, scientists, political luminaries, equally with ladies of rank and reigning beauties, succumbed to this unheard-of vogue, which persisted, we may add, to the very end of the master’s long career. Furthermore, his portraits form the most extensive part of his life-work, and at the same time the part which is the most indisputable and the most perfect.

There are nearly two hundred portraits that are known to have been painted by Goya. They are not all of equal value, and in some of them we feel a certain degree of carelessness of execution, which is to be explained by the rapid workmanship demanded of him by the abundance of his orders. But however hasty the work may be, there are always to be found in it the essential qualities of this artist: a surety of expression, a free yet firm outline, and an incredible understanding of his model’s personality. Goya did not trouble himself to embellish his patrons, for he was no flatterer; if the man or woman who posed before him was homely, Goya’s pencil would do nothing towards correcting the injustices of nature. That was not his business; but he was able, with an unsurpassed clearness of vision, to catch upon his canvas that flashing glance, that fugitive gleam of the inner soul which, at some precise moment, is sure to transfigure the most unlovely features. What distinguished him above all else was his originality, that purely personal stamp, thanks to which it is impossible not to recognize a Goya from the first instant. There is in him something that he shares in common with all the great portraitists, and yet he resembles no one of them. He is Goya.

In the portraits painted in costume, now to be seen in the museum at Madrid, he somewhat approached the manner of Velazquez; under this class might be mentioned the portraits of the Infante Don Luis and his family, that of the Count of Florida-Blanca, of the Duchess of Alba, and of General Urrutia, which is a magnificent masterpiece. All these portraits possess distinction, bold relief, and a lofty carriage which recalls the free and noble manner of the painter of Philip IV.

At other times his brush took on a milder manner, shading off into soft and vaporous tints that set us thinking of Reynolds and of Prudhon, especially in those intimate portraits into which he has put the greatest spontaneity. 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. We may also include among the works of his second manner the two portraits of woman which hang in the Louvre; The Woman with the Fan, which is reproduced in the present volume, and the Portrait of a Young Woman, which, together with the Ferdinand Guillemardet, are the only paintings by Goya which France’s chief national museum possesses.

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. 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 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. Francis of Barja bidding Farewell to his Family and St. Francis exhorting an Impenitent Dying Man, celebrated pictures which have been reproduced by the engraver Peleguer,—at other times portraits of the family, and lastly, a series of twenty-seven genre pictures for their Alameda in the environs of Madrid.”

Idyllic and anecdotic scenes play by far the larger part in these compositions. There is an Al Fresco Breakfast, in the midst of a delightful landscape, a Dance beside the Water, a Hunter showing his Family the Game that he has Killed, a Harvesting the Hay, a Resting from Labour, a Greased Pole, a Comical Accident at a Picnic, a Winter Landscape, The Seasons, Workmen constructing a Building, Highwaymen attacking a Stage-coach, Gypsies playing at See-saw, Bulls in the Arroyo, and lastly some of those inexplicable “caprices,” bizarre fantasies in which Goya mingles sorcerers and horned demons with members of the Inquisition.

Goya frequently introduced Inquisitors into his scenes; he had felt their claws early in life and had borne them a grudge ever since.

The most important and most celebrated canvas in this collection is The Romeria of San Isidro. This is the great festival in honour of the patron saint of Madrid. “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. All this picturesque world is divided into a thousand varied groups; here a circle has been formed around a man strumming on a guitar; over yonder a merry set is forming; there is quarrelling, dancing, drinking; there are meetings and partings, and in the midst of all this swarming multitude we watch the coming and going of pages, troopers, porters, members of the body-guard in their red coats, amidst an indescribable pell-mell of carriages with gaily decked steeds, and of calesinos with bodies painted in atrocious colours, which are overturned by the restive mules as they break away. In the foreground, dominating the whole scene, pretty women shading themselves under pink silk parasols, and well garbed personages grouped in easy and unaffected attitudes, form a most ingenious and charming framework for the scenes which are being enacted at their feet. In the background of the picture, above and beyond the Manzanares, we see the palace with its terraced gardens and the city with its towers and domes. Here are San Francisco el Grande and the Cuesta de la Vega, and yonder is the famous Barrio de Lavapiés.”

Treated in a warm and luminous scale of colour, lustrous with subtle and vivid tones, this sparkling page remains unsurpassed, because of the infinite care which Goya expended in order to give variety and an astonishing degree of precision to even the minutest of its multifold details.

The pictures of country life, such as the Al Fresco Breakfast, The See-saw, The Dance, The Picnic, show us Goya under still another aspect. The first time that one sees these pictures in the Alameda one would say that they were the product of the brush of some one of the French painters of the eighteenth century; one is tempted to attribute them to Watteau or Fragonard; and it is true that Goya chose, like them, to reproduce the fashions and frivolities of his time; but even while he imitated the vanities and affectations of these masters, he remained nevertheless a Spaniard, and his types and his costumes are represented with the most scrupulous truth.

On the 25th of April, 1789, a few months after Charles IV. ascended the throne, a royal order raised Goya to the dignity of Pintor da Camara, which corresponded to Peintre Ordinaire du Roi, a title formerly bestowed upon French artists. This distinction gave him, as in the case of Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber, free entry to the palace. Under the new king the Court had taken on a new aspect. During the reign of the devout Charles III. it was constrained to all the outward show of austere piety which recalled the morose years under the monarchs of the House of Austria. Under the new king everything was changed, laughter was revived, festivals recommenced, and with them, intrigues of gallantry and licentiousness. Scandals multiplied, and the example came from high up; Queen Maria-Luisa herself set the pace for a society that had been parched with thirst for pleasure, and she flaunted before the whole nation her absolute contempt of decency and her unbridled appetite for dissipation. The epoch of the high favour of the Prince de la Paix began. Goya, whose marriage had but poorly reformed him, welcomed this change of regime with enthusiasm. He was already something more than celebrated in Madrid because of his prowess with the fair sex, famous for his duels, an adept at all the nicer usages through his constant association with the upper circles; consequently he felt himself fully at ease in this atmosphere of shamelessness and incontinence. He had some famous intrigues and illustrious liaisons, which he did not even take the trouble to conceal. 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. 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 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. Having become the cavaliere servente of the Duchess, he no longer contented himself with plotting intrigues or launching epigrams; but he translated his opinions into the form of satiric caricatures, in which he mercilessly ridiculed the adversaries of his fair lady. The arrows that he launched flew so high that the outraged queen exiled the Duchess from her court and gave the Pintor da Camara a leave of absence. 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 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. Behold then our libertine philosopher transformed once more into a religious painter. Within three months he had completed the entire scheme of the decoration. The subject chosen was as follows: St. Anthony of Padua resuscitating a Dead Man in Order to Make him Reveal the Name of his Murderer. Goya placed his saint upon an eminence, from which he calls upon the dead man to come forth; the latter has already arisen from his tomb, has joined his hands, and is about to speak. On the right and left the compact throng press forward, anxious to see the miracle accomplished. All around the cupola the artist has pictured a sort of gallery on which the spectators lean, and among 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. “His women are true manolas, draping themselves in their mantillas, and his men are men of the people, arrieros proudly wrapped in their mantles of motley colour. In the corbels of the arches Goya painted cherubim, haloes, and angels, and he endowed these celestial beings with feminine charms and carnal graces that were far too reminiscent of the seductions of the earth. It is related that Goya used the ladies of the Court as models for these feminine countenances, and that on the day when the frescoes were unveiled, Charles IV. expressed his displeasure to the artist in unmeasured terms.”

From 1796 to 1797 Goya published that curious series of compositions done in etching and in water-colour which he entitled Caprices. And they were quite literally caprices through their infinite diversity of subject and the oftentimes extravagant fantasy of their execution. Scenes of local manners ironically interpreted, mocking allusions to popular superstitions, trenchant criticisms of public men and political institutions, attacks of unheard-of violence upon the established religion and its dogmas, pitiless satires upon the Inquisition and more especially upon the monastic orders, and finally prophetic dreams and visions of the future make up the contents of this singularly complex work which concealed a most audacious motive underneath its apparent fantasy. And all this treated with a sparkling brilliance, a diabolical cleverness that is carried sometimes to the point of brutality, with a realism that often causes a sort of revulsion. As to the execution, it is remarkable: the lines are clear-cut and vigorous, the 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.

In Spain these Caprices enjoyed a very considerable success, but they caused considerable discomfort to their author. At one time their publication was suspended. The Inquisition, which had been especially maltreated in these designs, became once more threatening, and showed an implacable ardour in its quest for vengeance. Nevertheless, it failed of its purpose, thanks to the kind offices of the Prince de la Paix, who was himself hostile to the monks and took Goya under his protection. In accordance with his advice, Goya offered his Caprices to the king, Charles IV., who, acting in accord with his minister, accepted them for his collection of copper-plates. Having thus found shelter behind the august presence, Goya became invulnerable; and the Inquisition had to let its prey escape.

On the 31st of October, 1799, Goya became First Painter to the king. He was at that time fifty-three years of age. Neither years nor indulgences had undermined his robust organism or diminished his talent. On the contrary, it was at this epoch that his manner underwent a transformation which bears witness once again to the resources and the vitality of this exceptional nature. A study of the works of Rembrandt had awakened in him a violent passion for the effects of light and of chiaroscuro, and from this time forward we find him practising this difficult art and manifesting in it a remarkable mastery and originality. In this style of painting, which was new to him, he achieved masterpieces from the first attempt, such for instance as the Betrayal by Judas, in the cathedral at Toledo, which might have been signed by Correggio or Rembrandt. The patch of light, which throws into strong relief the suffering face of Christ and the hideous countenance of Judas, is distributed in a masterly fashion and in no wise detracts from the luminous transparency of the shadows.

In this work, as in all others by this artist, both the personal and the national note are found to be strongly imprinted; all the participants in this scene are authentic Spaniards, whose classic types may still be recognized to-day in every city throughout the peninsula.

Mention also should be made, among the works in which Goya ventured upon chiaroscuro, of the celebrated picture in the Escuelas Pias in Madrid, representing The Communion of St. Joseph Calasanz, and of the spacious and original canvases with which he decorated the walls of his own home.

We now arrive at that turbulent period, extending from 1800 to 1814, which marked an era of national calamities for Spain. The facts are familiar: as a result of court intrigues, the luckless and unhappy 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.

All these years of struggle and patriotic frenzy Goya passed in his quinta, where he had shut himself up in complete isolation, taking no part in the events which were shaking Spain to its foundations. This attitude of his gave rise to a great amount of comment. In the eyes of many, Goya was an afrancesado, a partisan of the French invasion; but there seem to be no grounds that would justify anyone in offering him such an insult. It may be that, pledged as he was to ideas of justice and liberty, he was not displeased to see the downfall of a corrupt regime, under which Spain had been slowly dying. But that he had looked on light-heartedly at the misfortunes of his native land, and that he had not suffered to the very depths of his Spanish soul, would indicate a depravity which no one has a right to impute to him.

And if proof of this were needed, we could find it in his masterly series of The Misfortunes of War, eloquent and melancholy commentaries upon that troubled period, giving a gruesome panorama of military executions, conflagrations, pillage, and famine; in a word, the habitual and tragic accompaniment of a foreign invasion. 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. While other Spaniards, willingly or unwillingly, figured at the court of Murat and of Joseph, Goya remained in close retirement in his own house, notwithstanding his natural fondness for adventures and festivities. “But above and beyond his incontestable patriotism, a more generous sentiment, loftier and more profoundly humane, emanates from these sinister pages. What Goya hated beyond all else was war: it spelled iniquity, despotism, and above all, tyranny. Nothing more eloquent than this avenging protest has ever been formulated against the spirit of conquest and the barbarous struggle of nation against nation.” In about the year 1814, upon the return of Ferdinand II., Goya added to his Misfortunes of War seventeen new plates, the strangest and most daring of them all. This is the last and most strenuous battle that he ever waged on behalf of all he loved against all that he hated. What phials of wrath he poured out against intrigue, conservatism, and falsehood, which stifle liberty and repress human thought! What outbursts against the rogues who strive desperately to destroy liberty and justice! Here is a picture in which hypocrisy has conquered and has confiscated liberty: Contra el Bien General! Further on is another, in which truth is in its death agony: Murió la Verdad! But she will rise again: Si Resusitará! for it is impossible that she should disappear forever. Lastly, as a conclusion to this work, Goya prophesied in an eloquent page the return of a glorious era which should inaugurate the reign of liberty, love, happiness, and peace. And it bore this legend: This is the Truth!

But the reign of Ferdinand VII. did not fulfil the generous hopes of the great artist. With this king, the worst days of absolute monarchy were revived in Spain; the triumphant reaction manifested itself by persecutions, cruelties, and tyrannies of the most odious kind. Whoever was even suspected of liberalism was marked for exile or for prison. More than anyone else, Goya’s personal prominence exposed him to the attacks of the reactionists, but his very fame protected him. Ferdinand VII., when he received him one day, informed the aged artist that he “deserved exile, and more than exile; he deserved death!” but he consented to forget the past and he reappointed the artist to the office of First Painter. It would seem as though such protection should have sufficed to protect Goya from the machinations and hostilities of his adversaries. But it did nothing of the sort. The reactionary party would not consent that a liberal should escape its vengeance, even though protected by royal immunity; so it continued to hound him by means of secret intrigues and calumnies.

Goya, impatient and irascible by nature, could ill bear the malevolent insinuations, allusions, and contemptuous terms; he found himself stifling in such a poisoned atmosphere. Residence in Madrid had become impossible for him; the greater number of his friends, less fortunate than he, had already been forced into exile; and since the persecution showed no signs of abating, he saw his circle of friends dwindling day by day. At last he made up his mind to leave a native land that had grown so inhospitable and hostile. He asked the king for a leave of absence, and upon obtaining it crossed over into France.

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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. Besides, he was not well off, possessing scarcely anything besides his house in Spain and his pension as First Painter.

Accordingly, he continued to paint genre pictures and numerous portraits. Those of Don Juan Maguire, M. Pio de Molina, and M. J. Galos date from this epoch. He also painted another of his friends, also exiled, whom he met again at Bordeaux—Moratin, the celebrated Spanish poet, who, carried away by his passion for democracy, had sung the French invasion in eloquent stanzas and now expiated his error in exile.

Besides the portraits, Goya painted some very beautiful miniatures on ivory, and he renewed his experiments in lithography, which he had already undertaken in Madrid some years previous. His four large examples representing Bull Fights are masterpieces of colour and of movement.

In 1827 Goya had to journey back to Madrid, in order to make a personal appeal to the king for an extension of his leave of absence. Since he could not persuade Goya to remain, the king freely granted the favour requested; but he imposed one condition, and a very flattering one to the artist: namely, that he would first allow his portrait to be painted by Don Vicente Lopez, at that time Pintor da Camara. This portrait is now to be seen at the museum in Madrid.

That same year he returned to Bordeaux and once more resumed his cherished habits and his brush and palette. Many of the works of this later period remained in France, and the museum at Bordeaux possesses a considerable number of them.

Goya still continued to work, but his hands had begun to tremble and he could no longer see without the aid of a lens. His strength was failing and he felt that the end was drawing near. 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 genre painter and a remarkable portraitist. “In the tomb of Goya,” writes Théophile Gautier, “the ancient art of Spain lies buried; gone forever is the world of the toreros, the majos, the manolas, the contrabandists, the alguazils, and the sorceresses, the entire local colour of the Peninsula. He arrived in time to gather all this together and to preserve it on his canvas. He fancied that he painted only ‘caprices;’ yet what he really did was to paint the portrait of bygone Spain, all the time convinced that he was giving his service to the new ideas and new beliefs.”