Francisco de Goya: Life, Art, and Influence on Modern Painting
Francisco de Goya
From Wikipedia
Francisco de Goya (Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, 30 March 1746 – Bordeaux, France, 15 April 1828)[1] was an Aragonese painter and engraver. His work includes easel and mural painting, printmaking, and drawing. In all these facets, he developed a style that opens into Romanticism.[2] His contribution also represents the beginning of contemporary painting and is considered a precursor of the avant-garde painting of the twentieth century.
After training in his homeland in the late Baroque style, in 1770 he traveled to Italy where he came into contact with a nascent Neoclassicism. This style was adopted when he went to Madrid in the mid-1770s, to which he added a more Rococo picturesqueness of customs as a result of his new job as a painter of cartoons for tapestries for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara.[3]
In 1793, he suffered a serious illness which then evolved into more creative and original paintings, using less friendly subjects than those he had painted for the decoration of royal palaces. A series of small paintings on tin, which he called “the whim and invention,” began the mature phase of the artist’s work and the transition to romantic aesthetics.
His work reflects the convulsive historical period in which he lived, particularly the consequences of the Spanish War of Independence (French War), which are depicted in the series of engravings The Disasters of War, making a comparison to a story of modern atrocities. It presents a vision of heroism where the victims are always individuals, without difference of class or status.
Within his work, it is worth mentioning the famous La maja desnuda, which achieved popularity in part due to the controversy surrounding the identity of the woman portrayed.[4] In the early nineteenth century, he also created several portraits that confront the way to new bourgeois art. After the French War, he painted two large canvases about the events of 2 May 1808, a precedent both aesthetically and thematically for historical painting, as it not only depicts the incidents close to the reality of the artist but also conveys a universal message.
His art culminates in a series of oil paintings that he executed on the dry walls, with which he decorated his country house (the Quinta del Sordo). These are the so-called Black Paintings. In them, Goya anticipates contemporary painting and various avant-garde movements of the twentieth century that would renovate the painting style.
Museo del Prado
Over forty percent of Francisco de Goya’s paintings are housed at the Prado Museum, allowing visitors a detailed study of the artist’s evolution. Goya emerged from the Spanish tradition. As he himself declared, his master was Velázquez. He was a unique and brilliant artist at the height of the great creators, far removed from the Spanish painters of his time. Among the most important compositions that the Prado possesses are The Parasol, The Drunken Mason, and the cartoons for tapestries, as well as The Dukes of Osuna and their Children, The Countess of Chinchón, Don Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, The Family of Charles IV, and The Marchioness of Santa Cruz, among other portraits. Added to these are the two Majas, almost converted into icons. Goya, as a painter of “history,” is represented by The Charge of the Mamelukes and The Executions of the Third of May. Among the works belonging to the two latest stages of his life, the memorable Black Paintings, created in Madrid, and The Bordeaux Album, which Goya worked on until the end of his days in Bordeaux, stand out.
Forming part of this same collection, the Prado offers many still lifes by Luis Meléndez, cabinet wall paintings, and Dancing in the Alcázar, as well as Masks and Carlos III Eating Before His Court, cartoons for tapestries by the Bayeu Brothers, and other paintings of interest, such as The Ascension of a Montgolfier Balloon in Aranjuez by Antonio Carnicero.