Wednesday 9 October 2024

Francisco de Goya - Part 2

Self-Portrait 1795
oil on canvas 18.2 x 12.2 cm

Francisco de Goya was a Spanish artist widely considered one of the most important painters of the Romantic period. The artist took on a wide array of subject matter, including self-portraiture, fantasy scenes, landscapes, and still lifes. “Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends,” he once explained. Born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes in the town of Fuendetodos, Spain on March 30, 1746, he began studying art under the painter Jose Luzán at the age of 14. During the 1770s, Goya produced works such as The Parasol (1777), which meld the unlikely pairing of cheery Rococo aesthetics with the moody works of Diego Velázquez. 

The artist became the court painter of Charles III of Spain in 1786, and continued painting for the Spanish court until Napoleons invasion of Spain in 1808. During the Napoleonic wars, Goya’s palette significantly darkened as he produced some of his most famous works. Among these paintings are the The Second of May 1808 (1814) and The Third of May 1808 (1814), which show the terrors of war. Three years before he left his native country, Goya produced 14 paintings directly onto the plaster walls of his farmhouse. These works, collectively known as The Black Paintings (1821), depicted terrifying supernatural themes and heinous violence. 

Living in exile in Bordeaux, France, the artist died on April 16, 1828. His works went on to have a profound influence on both Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. Today, Goya’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Prado Museum in Madrid, and the Louvre Museum in Paris, among others.


This is part 2 of a 10-part series on the works of Francisco de Goya:


1777 The Fight at the Cock Inn
(Brawl at the Mesón del Gallo Inn)
oil on canvas 41.9 x 67.3 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1778 A Dwarf (after Diego Velázquez)
etching with engraved inscription on laid paper
21.5 x 15.5 cm

1778 A Dwarf (after Diego Velázquez)
etching with engraved inscription on laid paper
20.7 x 14.8 cm

1778 Aesop (after Diego Velázquez)
etching on paper
(size not given)

1778 Bacchus (after Diego Velázquez)
etching on heavy laid paper
(size not given)

1778 Baltasar Carlos (after Diego Velázquez)
 etching and drypoint with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
35 x 22.3 cm (plate)

1778 Gaspar de Guzman, Conde Duque of Olivares (Count Duke of Olivares) (after Diego Velázquez)
 etching with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
37.2 x 31 cm

1778 Isabel de Borbon

A court painter during his early career, Goya produced prints with comparatively little political subtext after his famed predecessor Diego de Velázquez. Isabella de Bourbon, the wife of King Phillip IV of Spain, is depicted riding sidesaddle in this portrait based on a 1635 painting in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Intended to be paired with a companion image of Philip, the print faces the same way as the panting, showing Isabella enjoying a secure seat, elaborate trappings, and an expensive horse.


1778 Isabel de Borbon (after Diego Velázquez)
etching with engraving in black on off-white laid paper
37.2 x 21.1 cm (plate)


1778 Margaret of Austria (after Diego Velázquez)
 etching and drypoint with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
37 x 31 cm (plate)

1778 Moenippus (after Diego Velázquez)
etching on paper
(size not given)

1778 Philip III
etching and drypoint with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
38.5 x 31 cm (plate)

1778 Philip IV (after Diego Velázquez)
etching with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
 37.2 x 31.2 cm (plate)

1778 The Blind Guitarist
oil on canvas 260 x 311 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1778 The Drunkards 

Until Goya produced 19 etchings after 17th-century Velázquez paintings in 1778, the original compositions were little known. Goya’s copies reproduced all the prints in the same direction as the originals. He advertised the availability of this print and the Baltasar Carlos in the Gazeta de Madrid on Tuesday, December 22, 1788: “Two new prints one of which represents the Prince Don Baltasar Carlos on horseback, and the other a false Bacchus crowning some drunkards; paintings by Don Diego Velázquez extant in His Majesty’s Royal Palace, drawn and graved in etching by Don Franciso Goya, Painter.”


1778 The Drunkards (after  Diego Velázquez)
etching with engraved inscription on ivory laid paper
31.8 x 43.7 cm


1778-79 Cartoons for tapestries on “countryside” subjects 3rd series:

In October 1777, Goya received a commission to paint 20 cartoons for tapestries intended to decorate the walls of the Prince and Princess of Asturias's bedchamber and their anteroom in the palace of El Pardo, north of Madrid, while he was completing designs of others tapestries for their dining room. This would be the third set of cartoons commissioned from the young Goya and proposed by Anton Raphael Mengs, first painter to the king and director of the decoration of his palaces. The artist was charged with creating original compositions depicting the contemporary life of Madrid and its surrounding areas. Goya had to rework some of the initial cartoons due to complaints from the weavers at the Royal Tapestry Manufactory regarding the variety of colors he had used, as they found it impossible to translate onto the tapestry the same richness and nuances of colour. The guards tobaccos , from this series, entered the Prado from the repository of cartoons in the Royal Palace in Madrid. Goya depicted extraordinarily varied subjects, including washerwomen, vendors, bullfighters, people at play, street musicians, children, and other characters, to represent the life of common folk in Enlightenment-era Spain, bringing together diverse social classes in accordance with the political outlook of Charles III.


1778 The blind man with the guitar
oil on canvas 260 x 311 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1778-79 A Fair in Madrid
oil on canvas 258 x 218 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1778-79 The soldier and the lady
oil on canvas 259 x 100 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779 Boys playing soldiers
oil on canvas 146 x 94 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779 Man with a guitar
oil on canvas 137 x 112 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779 The Pottery Vendor
oil on canvas 259 x 220 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779-80 Boy with a Bird
oil on canvas 242 x 60 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779-80 Boy with Tree
oil on canvas 262 x 40 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

-------------------------------------------------------------

1778-80 The Garrotted Man
 etching on wove paper 32.7 x 21 cm

c1778 The Jester Barbarroja (after Diego Velázquez)
etching, aquatint, burin and roulette [proof] on laid paper
28.2 x 16.7 cm (plate)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1779 or before To the Count Palatine
etching, aquatint, drypoint and burin on laid paper
 21.7 x 15.3 cm (plate)


1779-80  Cartoons for tapestries on “countryside” subjects 4th series:

1778 Children with a Cart
oil on canvas 145.4 x 94 cm
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

1779 The Doctor
oil o canvas 95.8 x 120.2 cm
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

1779 The game of Pelota with Rackets
oil on canvas 271 x 470 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779 The game of Pelota with Rackets
detail

1779 The game of Pelota with Rackets
detail

1779 The Swing
oil on canvas 269 x 165 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779-80 The Tobacco Guards
oil on canvas 262 x 137 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1779-80 The Washerwomen
oil on canvas 218 x 166 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1780 The Lumberjacks
oil on canvas 141 x 114 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1780 Amateur Bullfight
oil on canvas? 259 x 136 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1780 The Seesaw
oil on canvas 30.9 x 43 cm
Museu de Belles Arts de València, Spain
------------------------------------------------------------

1780 Christ Crucified
oil on canvas 255 x 154 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1780 Charity
etching and drypoint on paper 13.1 x 9.5 cm (plate)

1783 Portrait of María Teresa de Vallabriga on horseback
oil on canvas 82.5 x 61.7 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

1783 María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga

Ingenuous but self-assured, the future countess wears the fashionable attire of a lady of the Spanish court as she poses at the edge of a terrace. She gazes out at the viewer with an innocence very much in contrast with her adult costume and mature stance. In the style of earlier “grand-manner” portraiture, Goya may have manipulated the setting to enhance the image of the diminutive sitter, perhaps adjusting the scale of the parapet to her size and placing the wall close to her.

This is one of four portraits by Goya of María Teresa, with whom he maintained a lifelong sympathetic relationship. One of the most tragic figures at the court of Charles IV, the countess was trapped in a humiliating marriage to the King’s minister, Manuel Godoy, arranged by the Queen, Maria Luisa, for her own duplicitous purposes.

1783 María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga
oil on walnut panel 48 x 39.6 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1783 María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, later Condesa de Chinchón
oil on canvas 134.5 x 117.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1783 José Moñino, First Count of Floridablanca
oil on canvas 196 x 116.4 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1784 The Family of the Infante Don Luis
oil on canvas 248 x 330 cm
Magnani Foundation, Parma, Italy

1784 The Family of the Infante Don Luis
detail

1784 The Family of the Infante Don Luis
detail

1785-90 A Picnic
 oil on canvas 41.3 x 25.8 cm
The National Gallery, London

1786 The Grape Harvet, or Autumn
oil on canvas 275 x 190 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1786-87 Woman with two boys at a fountain
(“Poor People at the Fountain”)
oil on canvas (size not given)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1786 Charles III in hunting dress
oil on canvas 207 x 126 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1786 The Marquesa de Pontejos
oil on canvas 210.3 x 127 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

c1786 Winter Scene
oil on canvas 34.3 x 35.6 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.