Goya

1746-1828

Revision

Goya in Aragon

• The subject matter of these works are generally of a religious nature.

• They were painted between 1760 and 1781 for his home parish, his family and members of the Aragonese nobility.

• His most important clients were without doubt the Aragonese church

• Shortly before his departure to Madrid, the canons of the Basilica del Pilar.

• After had left his home province, he continued to work for Aragonese clients as a portrait and religious painter.

Influences

• In his youth, Goya assimilated various influences from the atmosphere prevalent in Zaragoza and Madrid at that time, mostly late Baroque and Rococco.

• Major influences were painters such as Jose Luzan, and Francisco Bayeu.

• During his journey to Italy he came into contact with Classicism and the initial stages of Neo-Classicism which were to have a temporary, superficial influence.

Subjects

• He painted works of an allegorical and mythological nature. However, the greater part of his work consisted of religious art, studies of contemporary life and portraiture.

• During his time as painter for tapestries, a job which required the study of conventional themes, Goya committed himself to the pictorial study of his characters (customs and fashion)

Subjects

• In his works of a social nature, Goya systematically addressed the most pressing social, economic and political problems in Spain: • the vices of the clergy,• the philistinism of a large part of the aristocracy, • the absurd and barbaric repression of the Inquisition, • the excesses of violence and war, • prostitution and the exploitation of women • and obscurantism and superstition.

• In these works Goya revealed himself as an ilustrado, a supporter of the Enlightenment, a lover of freedom and a humanist.

Paintings

• During his period in Aragon he painted religious subjects for Church

• He was chosen as a painter of tapestry cartoons

• In 1780 Goya entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Francisco with a painting of Christ on The Cross.

• Once he became famous he worked on portraits, designs and religious paintings.

Paintings

• In the final decade of the century, Goya became aware of the grotesque shifts in the socio-political climate. He suffered a grave illness in 1792 which left him completely deaf. His experiences of that time matured his work and led him to adopt a more critical point of view.

• His new way of painting affected his religious work, as can be seen in the frescos in the church of San Antonio de Florida

• At the beginning of the 19th century, Goya began to work on highly Romanticist subjects, such as contemporary stories: scenes of witchcraft and the political role of people

Paintings

• Another grave illness in 1819 brought about a new phase in the artist's oeuvre. The fruits of this new change in direction were the highly enigmatic paintings in his country house, the Quinta del Sordo

• Here he painted his “black paintings”, creating a horrifying, hallucinatory world of imagery

• Goya felt obliged to leave Spain in the midst of the repression unleashed by Fernando VII after the French invasion. He moved to and settled down in France where he painted new portraits and some works on the subject of bullfighting. The painting The Milkmaid of Bordeaux marks the end of his artistic career

Stylistic development

• He excelled in the late Baroque and Rococo styles in his youth, but he never fully incorporated the influence of Neo-Classicism which was predominant in Spain and Europe in the final decades of the18th century and the beginning of the 19th.

• Goya was an artist ahead of his time, who created works full of personality, both in painting and in engraving without ever conforming to the conventional.

• He predicted the predominant movements of the 19th and 20th century. Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism were the principal movements to be influenced by his work.

Stylistic development

• Goya was pictorially trained within the confines of the late Baroque and Rococo styles, as can be seen in the work produced in his youth.

• His journey to Italy brought him to into contact with the prevailing pictorial styles of Classicism and Neo-Classicism, the influences of which can be seen in his work in Zaragoza.

Stylistic development

• At Court he used different styles. • In the tapestry cartoons, the Rococo was predominant

when dealing with subjects full of joy and vivacity. • He allowed the new winds of Neo Classicism to influence

him in some of his religious and mythological works, but he felt uncomfortable with the new style which was becoming increasingly fashionable.

• He decided to follow his own aesthetic sensibilities. • In his old age he stated that his masters were Velazquez,

Rembrandt and Nature.

Stylistic development

• In the portraits and other works, the influence of Velazquez can be seen in Goya's treatment of space, light and staining techniques.

• This tendency became more and more pronounced to an almost impressionistic degree, from 1800 onwards.

• Goya's portraits, direct, psychological and realistic, renewed the genre.

Stylistic development

• Etching and aquatint were the predominant types of engraving used by Goya in which he created a series of works which were inspired by his personality and imagination.

• In the Caprichos fantasy and realism combined to produce a savage, daring social critique. Similar to these were the Disparates

• Crude and desolate realism dominate The Disasters of War.

• The Tauromaquia is based on the bullfighting tradition.

Stylistic development

• The world of the subconscious blossomed in the mysterious, impact full images of the Black Paintings, painted in the Quinta del Sordo in Madrid.

• These images were to be appreciated years later by Expressionists and Surrealists as precursors of their movements.

Technique

• In paintings he did not used drawing. The images were realised with colour stains.

• His palette changed with the time:• At the beginning it was light, full of colour, as if this

was his perception of life• It became more violent in the paintings depicting the

war• After his illness it became dark and with a very limited

number of colours

Technique

• His brushstrokes are powerful, but they changed along his life:• More regular at the beginning and in portraits• Irregular and careless but full of strenght in war

paintings and black paintings

• He managed to represent any kind of textures and sometimes his touch is delicate, specially in transparencies

Technique

• In etchings and engravings he used different techniques:• Dry point: he did the drawing directly on the surface

by making incisions• Burin: he prepared the surface with the drawing

realised with a burin • Aquatint: he used a resine to cover the plaque; he

painted on that and after the plaque was submerged in an acid that attacked the parts not covered by the protective resine

Works

• Religious: Paintings of the Seo of Zaragoza and frescoes of San Antonio de la Florida

• Customs: La Gallina Ciega, El Quitasol• Portraits: Duchesse of Alba, Ferdinand VII, Charles IV’s

Family, Duchesse of Chinchón, Floridablanca• History: Charge of the Mameluques, The Shootings of the

3th of May• Black paintings: Aquelarre, Saturno Eating His Sons• Etching and engraving: Caprichos, Disparates, Disasters

of the War, Tauromaquia