THE ARTIST'S LIBRARY

GOYA

By W. ROTHENSTEIN

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GOYA BY W. ROTHENSTEIN : NUMBER
FOUR OF THE ARTIST'S LIBRARY EDITED
BY LAURENCE BINYON AND PUBLISHED
AT THE SIGN OF THE UNICORN VII
CECIL COURT ST. MARTIN'S LANE LONDON

GOYA 'BY W. ROTHENSTEIN

LONDON MDCCCC
AT THE SIGN OF THE UNICORN

EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED

I
In the case of the greatest masters of painting, however con
siderable their influence over us, and however well acquainted
we may be with their works, we are overwhelmed anew each
time we find ourselves in the presence of one of them ; and what
was a more or less remembered pleasure becomes an emotion
of such violence, that we are conscious of a feeling of something
like shame for not having cried the names of Giotto, Van Eyck,
Rembrandt, (as the case may be,) daily from the housetops.
On the other hand, it may happen that a remote and exquisite
remembrance of a picture will be spoiled upon later acquaintance ;
and we are often somewhat timid of reapproaching certain of
those idols which opened out before us, at an early period of
our development, a new vista of art, and gave us an added
sense of nature, or romance. And though it is perfectly true
that we should only allow ourselves to be occupied with the
very best art, we must beware of applying to such any standard
of snobbishness. For however many reasons men may give for their admiration
of masterpieces, it is in reality the probity and intensity with
which the master has carried out his work, by which they are
dominated ; and it is his method of overcoming difficulties, not
of evading them, which gives style, breadth, and becoming mystery
to his execution. And this quality of intensity, whether it be
the result of curiosity for form, or of a profound imagination
for nature, which lives, as it were, upon the surface of a drawing,
or of a picture, is the best test we have for what we may
consider as art.
A general tendency among English painters has been, I
5

think, with few notable exceptions, to seek inspiration from
pictures rather than from Nature. The influence Hogarth might
have exercised was quickly overridden by that of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, whose erudition and passion for pictures, and genuine
dislike of all he did not consider to be sufficiently sublime in
life, whose high standard of excellence, and distinguished person
ality, earned for him a position no artist had hitherto held in
England. The veriest hint from Nature sufficed him for his
pictures, and if he was a little too familiar with beauty, it was
at least this lack of humility which enabled him to hand down
to posterity a host of beautiful women, and distinguished gentle
men, with glimpses of poetic scenery behind them.
Neither Holbein nor Van Eyck nor Diirer have indeed
had any appreciable effect upon the English school of painting.
That uprightness which Englishmen practise in their lives,
they would seem rather to despise in their art, and Venice
has, for the last hundred years, been their Mecca. The view
that an artist, in the arrangement of his life, and the choice
of his subjects, should feel himself to be above suspicion, is
not always held in this country even by painters themselves.
Rembrandt is still more admired as a painter of portraits than
for that serene and serious outlook on life,, that profound in
terpretation of nature and Christlike sympathy for men and
women, which he shows in his compositions. The accusation
of a lack of taste is one not uncommonly brought against
him by otherwise distinguished men, and, were he now living
among us, he would not perhaps have any less leisure on
his hands than when he painted the wonderful portraits of
himself and of Hendrickje.
It was into France that the influence of Goya's art, like
Constable's, first entered. Proofs of the drawings he made
upon stone at Bordeaux got into the studios in Paris ; and
the younger painters, Delacroix more, perhaps, than any of
the others, began to realise the significance of the new elements
of composition and style shown in these remarkable prints.
Goya was the connecting link between traditional art and
the violently awakening spirit of the nineteenth century ; and
with the new emotions he found a new manner of expressing
them. Much that was bizarre and tumultuous, the strangeness
of charm, a certain curious and sombre side of beauty, the sense
6

of the strength of a personality, the reflection of extravagant
gaiety, or excessive horror, Goya was able to render in a
manner that had never been seen before. A world of his
own imagining always haunted him, and he gave full play
to his fantastic inventiveness. His men and women have all
something of the overpowering genius that Balzac gave to his
characters. That sharpness of reality, which only Van Eyck
has been able to keep undivorced from the highest and most
patient science and labour, was so alluring to Goya, that,
though he was gifted with the power of creating works of
traditional finish, his passion for this mysterious quality of life
made him willing to sacrifice precisely those qualities which are
looked for and admired in most painters, for a peculiar grip
and vivacity of presentment. Hence to all he touched he
gave immense vitality. And for this reason his work has a
rare fascination, a fascination we are not perhaps so much
aware of before his pictures, but one which grows slowly upon
us, lending certain new qualities, if we allow our minds to dwell
on them at all, to our view of men and women ever after.
His nature was frank and even brutal, disdainful but not
ignorant of refinement. Perhaps, the more violent his subject, the
more relish had he in attacking it. But it must be borne in mind
that he did what so many artists pride themselves on doing, what
so few do : he painted to please himself.
Though he lived among princes the greater part of his life, he
never flinched from his principles ; perhaps never before did an
impetuous and anarchical nature, so impatient of injustice, live
side by side with the worldly and selfish natures that go to make
a Court. To me it has never ceased to be a matter of surprise that, see
ing the frankness of his attitude, both as regards his art and his
life, all the aristocracy of Spain should have been so eager to sit
before him, and become possessors of his pictures and his prints.
He was enabled, through the fashion which, in spite of his attitude,
he enjoyed for a prolonged period, and his quick sympathy with
the sufferings as well as the amusements of the people, to press,
as it were, the whole life of Spain on to his canvasses ; and it is
no small thing to say that, with the exception perhaps of Balzac,
no single man has ever given us so complete a picture of a period
which covers considerably more than half a century.
7

II
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born at Fuendetodos,
near Saragossa, in 1 746. Having the advantage of being the son
of poor but robust working people, he received no more education
than a village schoolmaster in the last century could give ; but a
growing love for drawing brought him at the age of fifteen to
Saragossa, to the studio of Lusan, an artist of some intelligence
and reputation, who had studied in Italy, and held in particular
esteem the works of Tiepolo. Under him he worked for some
four or five years ; but that indifference to injustice, which allows
young painters to lead such calm and dignified lives in England,
was absent from Goya's anarchical nature. His desire for freedom
of thought and action soon earned him a dangerous reputation ;
and his father, afraid lest his son might fall into the clutches of
the Inquisition, then still in the full force of its existence, managed
to send him to Madrid. The jealous mistrust which exceptional
intelligence seems not uncommonly to sow in the minds of foolish
people, soon made Madrid equally dangerous for Goya ; the many
escapades of which he was accused were as likely as not the
subject of considerable exaggeration. It seems, however, true
that he was found lying in the street with a knife sticking into
his back, one summer morning ; and, being again annoyed with
rumours ofsome action to be taken by the Inquisitors, he deter
mined, with characteristic energy, to go to Rome. There is no
trace to be found of any work of his executed during the first
few years he spent in Madrid; but the effect of his personality was
already so marked, that on his arrival in Rome he immediately
found himself in the most interesting circles of the Eternal City.
M. Yriarte, in his admirable biography of Goya, writes that he
8

worked his way south from Madrid as a bull-fighter. At Rome
he was welcomed and materially assisted by his compatriots, and
set about studying the works of such masters as appealed to his
own temperament, copying scarcely at all ; indeed, he would seem
to have spent but little time before his easel ; we know from the
" Mercure de France " that he won a second prize at Parma for a
" Hannibal, victorious, seeing Italy for the first time from the
summit of the Alps," and that he painted a full-length portrait of
the Pope (Benedict xiv.) — still preserved at the Vatican — in a few
hours ; but little else is certain of his movements in Italy.
The story goes that, in attempting to carry off a young girl
from a convent, Goya fell into the hands of the monks, from
whose hands he was with difficulty rescued through the interven
tion of the Spanish Ambassador at Rome.
It was in Rome that he became intimate with Bayeu, one of
the painters to Charles in., and saw much of David, with whom he
corresponded later in life, and whose revolutionary ideas must
have strengthened his own convictions. Bayeu was of no small
service to him on his return to Madrid in 1775, and gave him his
daughter Josefa in marriage ; and he now began to show talent of
so certain an order, that the other Spanish painters of importance,
feeling it would be impossible to crush him, joined with the
younger enthusiasts, who hailed Goya as their new leader.
In the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid hang five small
canvasses by his hand, belonging to the period following his return
from Italy. They must come as a complete surprise to those who
are only acquainted with the few scattered works by Goya to be
seen out of Spain. These pictures, all of them fantastic or violent
in subject, are painted in a delicate and silvery key, with exquisite
lightness of touch. The composition, remotely inspired, perhaps,
by recollections of Guardi and Longhi, is in each case strikingly
original. In the " Little Bull Fight " we see for the first time that
trick of putting, as it were, a girdle of figures along the frame,
round the central point of interest, the use of which fascinated
Goya throughout his life, and which we see used in identically the
same manner in one of the ' finest of his lithographs, drawn some
fifty years later at Bordeaux.
These small pieces are perhaps more comparable with the early
paintings of Hogarth, at the period when he to,o was influenced,
through Ricci, then in England, by the late Venetians; such
b 9

painting as we see in the sketch of the Street Musicians at the
Oxford Gallery, or in the small panels he executed before the
engravings for Butler's Hudibras. .
Elentierro de la Sardina, reproduced in this volume (Plate I.),
may perhaps show such relationship, and give some idea of the
remarkable vivacity and spirit of the painting and of the com
position. Indeed, Goya's powers in this latter direction were so
apparent, that Mengs, the admired Pretender to the throne of
Raphael, the Dictator of all the Arts during the reign of
Charles in., actually commissioned him to execute a series of
designs, which were to be woven into tapestries for the decoration
of the Prado and the Escurial.
These cartoons, being intended for this purpose, are painted in
so crude a key, and with so little regard for harmony of colouring,
that their merit is apt to escape the attention of many students at
the Prado, who would otherwise, perhaps, be naturally attracted to
them. Brutally painted, they nevertheless show to the full those
qualities of the eighteenth century school, which consist in giving,
instead of studied trees, hands, or folds of drapery, something-
remarkably like them. Already in these designs he shows
promise of his own profound observation and versatility ; and the
facility he acquired in his youth for escaping difficulties was
beginning to be of immense service to him in grappling with them.
The divers elements of romping charm and somewhat sombre
romanticism lend a curiously alluring character to the whole, and
it is perhaps difficult to understand why these cartoons, so able
and so original, should not have commanded more interest, outside
Spain. The brilliant juego del cucharon, the children blowing a bladder
and gathering fruit in a tree, — curiously suggestive of the English
school, — the Stilt Walkers, the laundresses by the Manzanares,
and those robust wantons tossing the pelele in a blanket, are so
ably painted, and so original in composition, that, even taking the
colour and the somewhat disagreeable quality of the surface into
consideration, it is impossible not to regard them as works of
singular importance.
Many of these popular subjects Goya repeated later for the
Countess of Benavente, at the Alameda, on a smaller scale, and
with a more delicate palette. io

The success of these tapestry designs, of his Christ Crucified,
(now in the museum of the Prado,) and the St. Francis on the
mountain, with which the old King, Charles in., expressed himself
especially delighted, — though neither of them can be considered
representative of Goya's genius, — obtained for him in 1780 a seat
in the Academy of San Fernando.
Don Luis, the King's brother, was one of the first to offer
Goya his patronage, and Charles himself, shrewd enough to know
that without great subjects a King is but a small Prince, was
beginning to be alive to the glory Goya might contribute to his
reign. There was, indeed, no one to compete with him, and
people had quickly discovered his gifts as a portrait painter.
Though Maella and Bayeu were the official painters to the
Court, Goya was sought after by persons of every quality, the
tongue of gossip lending, maybe, an element of mystery to
the studio.1
The most important work he undertook about this time, was
for one of the cupolas in the Church of del Pilar at Saragossa, the
decoration of which Bayeu had been commissioned to execute in
part, and to superintend.
Goya's designs were, in the first place, not approved by the
Dean and Chapter ; and, suspicious of the part his father-in-law
might have had in their judgment, he refused to alter them. The
rigid principles of the artist to produce his own work in his own
manner have, probably since the beginning of things, been the
cause of bitterness and strife between him and the public. To be
humble before nature, to work, unmindful of everything, uniquely
for the standard of perfection he has set himself, is the true life of
the artist ; rightly or wrongly, the shock of misapprehension on the
part of others, the result of an absence of sympathetic perception,
or of an entirely different point of view, which never fails to fling
the painter into despair at his dependence on a patron, brings into
play a spirit of arrogant stubbornness on his part, which is usually
incomprehensible to his friends, and causes him often to be left
with his work on his hands.
1 That Goya was faithful to his wife it would be idle to pretend ; that he was deeply
attached to her during her lifetime is undeniable. She bore him twenty children, of
whom, at his death, but one son was alive. With the single exception of his devotion to
the unfortunate Duchess of Alba, his intrigues seem to have been as much caprices on
the part of his sitters, as his own. II

In this instance the Cupola was, however, eventually decorated
by Goya with slight, if any, alterations, as may be seen by com
paring it with the designs still preserved in the archives of the
Cathedral. For Don Luis he painted a large number of portraits, both of
himself and his family and their circle of friends. Brought up
as he was among the mountains, come of peasant stock, Goya, for
all the subtlety of his mind, never stooped to match his character
with those of the aristocrats in whose company he now found
himself. His quick intelligence took the place of breeding, while
the readiness of his wit, and his curiously fascinating personality,
made of him the most attractive person of Don Luis' circle.
Of enemies, nor is it to be wondered at, he had not a few ; but
he caused his pencil, which was as sharp as his sword, to be as
much respected, and he had the townspeople of Madrid — who had
for Goya, on account of his uncommon physical strength and
skill in their games and amusements, a positive hero-worship — at
his back. He had indeed, and without exerting any voluntary influence,
that magnetism which gives to certain people a peculiar power of
¦enslaving all classes of men and women.

12

Ill
In 1789, Charles iv. made Goya Pintor de cdmara del Rey,
thus giving him an official entry to the Palace. Under Charles
in. the Court still kept up the old traditions, and an appearance
at least, of rigid asceticism. But the new King troubled his head
very little about matters of etiquette, and his Queen Maria Luisa,
with her favourite Godoy, afterwards Prince de la Paix, quickly
turned the Court into a nest of intrigue and gallantry. Goya was
not of a character to be easily effarouche", but he showed his
contempt for the looseness of Maria Luisa and her Court, in his
letters and, more openly, in his etchings. He was, however,
received with open arms by all the different parties, more especially
by that of the Countess of Benavente, the head of the Ossuna
family, and one of the richest and most powerful ladies of Maria
Luisa's circle.
For her he painted, besides various decorations for the
Alameda, her country house near Madrid, and a quantity of
portraits, more than a score of compositions, chiefly illustrative
of the popular life of Spain. Before this important collection
came under the hammer, it was at the Alameda that Goya's genius
could be seen to the fullest advantage. The Countess' sympathy
with his temperament, by which she was, indeed, for a time,
completely dominated, sharpened his imagination and allowed free
play to his rare range of subject. The refined and somewhat
exotic atmosphere of her luxurious country-house seems at times
to have seduced Goya into gallant painting, and a somewhat
Spanish gallantry, as may be observed from an example we have
in the National Gallery, which came from the Ossuna Collection.
A better and more characteristic canvas hanging near it, is the
13

priest pouring oil into the Devil's lamp, a piece of daring anti-
clericalism which shows how fearless Goya was becoming, now
that he had secured the Royal patronage.
Among the most alluring of the popular scenes were the mat
de cocagne, a chaise stopped by brigands, the game of kiss in the
ring (a^subject he had already treated in his tapestry designs), and,
with the Romeria de san Isidro, the most important of all, the
construction of a church, the tower surrounded by scaffolding, with
workmen bringing up immense blocks of stone. The fine design
of this shows Goya under one of his best aspects. The Romeria
is the only one, perhaps, over which his hand has obviously
lingered. He seems, as a rule, to have hurried, as it were, to ease
himself of the excitement his observation and exuberant imagina
tion caused him; his mind was rarely sufficiently tranquil for
prolonged work on any one picture, and his anxiety to preserve
the freshness of nature on his canvasses prevented his carrying
them to a more detailed though less spontaneous completeness.
The Romeria de san Isidro is a small canvas, representing the
great yearly fete on the banks of the Manzanares, along which are
pitched miniature booths, crowds of holiday makers circulating
among them, with tiny coaches picking their way through, the
palaces and steeple of Madrid rising up on the other side of the
river, spread out beneath the feet of a sparkling bevy of rich idlers
in brilliant dresses in the foreground of the picture.
The quantity of detail Goya has put into this small canvas is
surprising, and he writes to his friend Zapater that he will not
readily undertake such a labour again.
¦ ¦ The picture of the manolas on the balcony (Plate VII.) is
painted with the same apparent ease, which we find in those of
the Alameda. The brilliance and gaiety of the women, and the
fatale aspect of the sinister gallants standing behind them, are
rendered in a peculiarly imaginative manner ; the original of this,
one of the most fascinating of Goya's canvasses, is in the possession
of the Ducde Montpensier, and hangs at the Palace of San Telmo,
at Seville. A repliqua, by Goya himself, was exhibited at the
Palais des Beaux Arts in Paris, a few years ago. His occasional
diabolical tendency is shown in the cartoon of Saturn devouring
his children, once hanging in Goya's own house, and now in the
Prado, a sinister and powerful composition, reminding one strangely
of the designs of Auguste Rodin. 14

Many of his portraits he painted in a single day, a sitting not
of a few hours merely, but one that lasted the whole of the day,
during which time Goya, inexorable towards his model, worked in
absolute silence with extraordinary concentration and vigour.
His palette was of the simplest, and he was in the habit of
painting at some distance from his sitter, attacking the masses
broadly in monochrome, and once his planes and proportions were
thoroughly well established, he worked in colour where it was
needed. It must not, however, be imagined that all his portraits
were attacked in a breathless manner. The remarkable group
of Charles iv. and his family in the Museum of the Prado at
Madrid, the portrait of Guillemardet (the first French Republican
Ambassador to the Court of Spain) in the long gallery of the
Louvre, those of Godoy, of Bayeu, (Plate IX.,) of the Duchess of
Alba, of the Duke of Fernan- Nunez, and others of the same
order, are pushed to a state of great completeness, both of
execution and of design.
But the restlessness of his temperament made him inclined to
seize on a characteristic rendering of pose and feature. A Miss
Linley Goya could not give us, but something very like the
delicate wantonness of a Perdita we may discover in more than
one of his canvasses. He delighted in the very particular beauty
of Spanish women ; in their proud manner of walking, of wearing
a mantilla, a flower ; in their elaborate fashion of dressing the hair.
He never tired of painting the high-heeled Moorish-pointed shoes
in vogue in his day among Spanish ladies. A favourite method
was to paint them seated, holding themselves very erect from the
hips, almost cambre".
His men he endowed with a quality of vitality which elicited
the enthusiastic admiration of Courbet, but he was also capable of
a subtle characterisation often absent from the portraits of the
great Frenchman. From Velasquez he learned how to compose
his equestrian portraits, — one of the finest of which, that of the
Queen Maria Luisa, riding astride her great horse, in the uniform
of a colonel of the guards, with the air of a woman who loved
men better perhaps than she was loved by them, hangs in the
Prado ; but he was too interested in a simple and direct inter
pretation of nature, to care to make much use of traditional poses
in any but his official portraits, for which, indeed, they were more
aptly suited.

"In nature," he used to say, "colour exists no more than
line, — there is only light and shade. Give me a piece of charcoal,
and I will paint your portrait for you."
"All painting," he said again, "consists of sacrifices and
parti-pris." Of his .nervousness when at work, and his irritability, the
onslaught he made on the great Duke of Wellington, who wished
to bring away from Spain his portrait by Goya, but exasperated
him by comments upon the work while in progress, is a character
istic example ; in a fit of passion Goya took a sword from the
wall, and forced his noble sitter to beat ,a retreat from his studio.
The Duke afterwards realised his presumption, and the portrait
was resumed, and is now at Strathfieldsaye. There is in the
present volume a reproduction of an extremely interesting drawing
in sanguine by Goya of Wellington, which lends a quality of
delicacy and sensitiveness to his features, not, I think, apparent
in any other portrait of the Iron Duke. The original drawing
is in the Print Room of the British Museum.
The gratitude- which patrons expect from their proteges was
not, perhaps, in Goya's case, sufficient to gratify the exigence of
the Benavente, more especially as she saw that he was becoming
entirely absorbed in her younger rival, the lovely Duchess of Alba,
whose beauty had that quality of suggestiveness which appeals so
strongly to a painter, and allows of his seeing her, according to
his mood, or hers, as a Juno, or an Amaryllis. It was at the same
time essentially Spanish,, and in her Goya discovered those
elements of character and charm which immediately responded
to an ideal of his own, thus calling into existence a hitherto
unexpressed type of woman.
The scandal of the painter's too intimate friendship with the
Duchess of Alba began to be whispered at the Court ; and Maria
Luisa, whose own reputation was by no means unimpeachable,
(probably at the instigation of the Countess of Benavente, who
imagined, perhaps, that her rival once removed to a safe distance,
Goya would be seen more frequently at the Alameda,) bade the
Duchess retire to her residence at San Lucar.
Goya, without hesitation, applied to the King for a prolonged
leave of absence, and prepared to accompany her into exile.
This incident was the indirect cause of the distressing deafness
from which he subsequently suffered, an infirmity which, with
16

advancing years, became so acute that no sound could reach his
ear. M. Yriarte tells how, an accident happening to their travelling
carriage on the road to San Lucar, far from any village where a
blacksmith might have been found, Goya himself undertook to
remedy the defect, and, lighting a fire to heat and straighten one
of the iron bars belonging to the coach, through the heat and
exertion caught a chill which brought on the first symptoms of
this weakness. Indeed, the whole of this business, was tragic
enough ; Goya's absence from Madrid was so greatly felt, that
in the year following the Duchess was recalled, and died shortly
after her return, before her beauty had begun to fade. M. Yriarte
speaks of having seen a sketch book containing many piquant and
touching sketches illustrative of their journey together.
Besides the many compositions and drawings for which the
Duchess sat, Goya painted a full-length portrait of her, wearing
her hair in the fantastic manner she affected, and her favourite
pet dog at her side ; an achievement of which he was particularly
proud. It is she we see looking down from the ceiling of San
Antonio de la Florida, from the pillows at the Academy of San
Fernando, (Plate VI.,) and we find her subtle personality breath
ing all through the pages of the Caprichos.

17

IV
In 1795 Goya was unanimously elected Director of the
Academy, and although Maella was still officially the first painter
to the King, Goya's popularity was at its height. He would
receive the whole Court at las Romerias, his house just outside
Madrid, where he provided sumptuous and often bizarre
entertainments. Although he would seem to have been sufficiently frank and
outspoken with regard to his agnostic opinions, his position was
so unique that he was entrusted three years later with the decoration
of the new and fashionable Church of San Antonio de la Florida.
I can remember nothing which gave me so clear an idea of
Goya's cynicism. Imagine a coquettish little church with a white
and gold interior, more like a boudoir than a shrine, but furnished
with altar, and seats and confessionals. One's nostrils expect an
odour of frangipani rather than incense, and it must be admitted
that Goya's frescoes do not strike a discordant note in this in
decorously holy place.
He painted various frescoes, besides a considerable number
of religious pictures for many of the churches in Spain, at Seville,
Valencia, Saragossa, and Toledo, but it was only when he treated
Biblical subjects in a more or less dramatic spirit that these com
positions assume any importance.
The frescoes at San Antonio de la Florida are painted with
great science and breadth, in treatment recalling the manner of
the elder Tiepolo ; the principal subject is the legend of the
miracle of Saint Anthony bringing a dead man to life. The
spandrils and tympanuns are filled with angels perhaps a little
daring in the insolence of their foreshortening.
18

The scene of Saint Anthony is depicted on the cupola as
taking place behind a railing which surrounds the whole of the
composition, and behind which a vast concourse of people is
grouped. The design is, however, nowhere concentrated, and
fails to be dramatic. Whether Goya indeed intended it to be so
is dpubtful, for he probably arranged it merely for the purpose of
representing a crowd of popular figures taken from the streets
and salons of Madrid.
The whole of these decorations, the cupola alone containing
more than a hundred figures, considerably over life size, Goya
executed in three consecutive months, without, it appears, missing
a single day's work, and they are considered by his own countrymen
to be his greatest achievement ; but in spite of their brilliancy and
power, it seems to me that it is rather in his more intense inter
pretation of life that his greatest force lies.
The most important ecclesiastical canvas executed by Goya
is one hanging in a somewhat remote part of the Church of San
Anton Abas at Madrid, an extremely dignified and impressive
composition, representing the communion of Saint Joseph of
Calasanz, from which M. Alphonse Legros might well have
derived some of his inspiration.

19

V
The decoration of the Church of San Florida won for Goya
the much coveted office of first painter to the King of Spain, just
at the time, oddly enough, when he was in great measure laying
aside his brushes to take up the needle.
He had up to this time done but a few desultory etchings of
slender merit, besides a series of careful plates after the pictures
of Velasquez. But a study of the prints of Rembrandt turned his
attention to the wider possibilities of the copper, and he began to
work upon a set of designs which were eventually published to
gether under the title of los Caprichos. These caprices, certainly
the most widely known of all his etchings, were produced one by
one, and were passed from hand to hand among his friends ; the
extravagant reports of their daring allusions to personal and
political intrigues of the Court soon created an immense amount
of excitement in Madrid, and the whole matter was on the point
of coming before the Inquisitors, when the King, by a cunning
subterfuge, suggested maybe by Godoy, disarmed an inquiry
which might have had awkward results for Goya, by ordering the
etcher to send him the plates he had commanded from him.
The humanity displayed in those prints is so large, the obser
vation so piercing, and the satire so just and reasonable, that to us
it matters nothing whether Maria Luisa and the Benavente, Urquijo
or Godoy, be the particular people over whose backs Goya flour
ished his lash. Whether don Carlos was entirely ignorant of their
possible allusions to his Queen and himself, or whether he was
clever enough to ignore them, must be a matter for conjecture.
As a matter of fact, Goya's hatred of the Church, which to his
mind acted in direct contradiction to the Gospel of its founders,
and condoned, if not encouraged, the cruelty and injustice of those
20

in power, suggested some of the bitterest pages of the Caprichos ;
but he made no attempt to suppress a natural indignation at the
sight of the folly and vulgarity of men, which so many people are
able to regard impassively.
Too much prominence has been given, perhaps, to the Capri
chos among the reproductions of Goya's work here given, but the
beauty and novelty of the compositions, their Gargantuan spirit,
the quite astonishing knowledge of, for instance, animals and birds
they display, and their satanic extravagance, combine to give them
an interest which I have found irresistible.
But their real power lies — and this applies to all of Goya's
etchings — in the introduction of subtle and distinguished qualities
of draughtsmanship into generally fantastic compositions.
That Delacroix copied every plate of the Caprichos,1 is no
small thing to add in their praise ; and indeed, for that power of
uniting observation of life and form with his own imagination,
Delacroix owed not a little to the Spaniard.
A quite particular sense of the wanton charm of women, and a
half dandified, half savage character he gave to his men, make
these etchings peculiarly haunting. Only Hokusai was capable of
such monstrous gaiety, such stinging satire, and he alone could
have lent probability to such monstrous phantasy ; Hogarth was
too sermonising, Rowlandson too rollicking ; a certain diabolical side
of his nature, which Goya allowed to be seen both in the Capri
chos and the Desastres, has probably prevented his etchings gaining
a footing in England. Whether this be the case or not, his prints
are rarely to be met with in this country.
Although the subjects are not so engaging as those of the
Caprices, it was in the series afterwards entitled Los Desastres de la
Guerra that Goya reached his highest point of perfection as an
etcher. It was during the occupation of Spain by the French troops,
that Goya commenced a set of drawings in sanguine for these
violent but superb plates. It is not so much the patriotism of a
Spaniard, but the outraged sense of a thinking man, that one feels
underlying them ; there is none of the stirring kettledrum note of
a Kipling, but a stern desire to show the equally appalling
savagery of conquest, or defeat.
1 The Print Room of the British Museum possesses a drawing by Delacroix after one
of these etchings, and I have seen another in the collection ofM. Degas.
21

VI
The etchings of Goya mark an important epoch in the history
of the art. Since Rembrandt, with the single exception of Tiepolo,
no one had made use of the copper successfully, as a medium for
personal expression. That there should have been so few masters
of etching is surprising, when we consider how alluring is the
actual impression on a clean sheet of paper, of a few lines, drawn
at haphazard upon a plate. But frank and direct as are Goya's
etchings, they were, unlike most of his paintings, only drawn upon
the plate after the most careful and complete preliminary studies.
He cared little, however, as may be imagined, for the more precious
side of the art ; his particular use of aquatint served him to give a
yet more sombre note to his designs, — no one, except Turner, has
used it with so much success. .Unfortunately the aquatint, lying
nearer the surface of the plate than the more deeply bitten line,
wears off after a certain number of impressions have been taken,
and only those prints contemporaneous with Goya give an
adequate idea of the quality of his etchings. Among the Caprices
especially are several plates, in which there is actually no line used,
the effect being obtained entirely by the aquatinting, but the
Disasters depend less on this process, and more upon the quality of
the line, which is, in many cases, of quite surprising beauty.
Of the vigour and finish of the drawing, and the rare imagina
tion for suffering displayed in this series, the two plates here repro
duced, (Plates XVIII. and XIX.,) are good examples; as dramatic
compositions they are perhaps the most important since the work
of Rembrandt. The violence and brutality consequent on the invasion of a
peaceful country by a horde of soldiers, is expressed throughout
22

with exceptional frankness, — Goya was not of a nature to gild the
corpses of his countrymen as they lay stark on the ground ; but it
must be borne in mind that the slaughtering of one's fellow-creatures
is now conducted in a better ordered manner, and more respect is
paid to prisoners and to their property, to women and children and
to the dead, than was the case in the earlier part of the century.
What Goya saw with his own eyes — what he heard and read of
the French invasion — he made use of for these Disasters. It was
long after his death that the whole of these plates saw the light,
and they were afterwards retouched and rebitten, and published by
the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid.1
Besides these, Goya etched a series of plates, known as the
Tauromachia,- equally remarkable, perhaps, for their spirit and
knowledge of the bull-ring, as for their intrinsic merit as etchings ;
there is a wonderful fascination in their sinister vehemence, and
many of the compositions are of great originality, (Plate XX. ; ) it is
probably the consummate mastery of the later lithographs of similar
subjects, which is inclined to make people underrate the etchings.
Los Proverbios, among which is one of the finest plates etched by
Goya, ( Plate XXI.,) were probably done after the Tauromachia. The
original impressions are so scarce, and the plates have subsequently
been so ill handled, that it is difficult to judge them with any
degree of fairness, for the aquatinting has evidently been tampered
with to a considerable extent.
1 Copies of this edition may be seen both in the Print Room of the British Museum
and in the Art Library at South Kensington.

23

VII
The later years of Goya's life were spent under gloomy circum
stances. The King and Queen, with Godoy, fallen from his
brilliant heights, were in exile at Fontainebleau, and Joseph
Bonaparte — Pepe Botellas — had been placed by his brother on
the throne of Spain. Goya, grown bitter and self-absorbed, and
caring little for what King he might be the painter, took the oath
of allegiance along with most of Charles's Court, and painted the
usurping King's portrait without any feelings of compunction.
In 1 8 14, greatly to the people's joy, the Prince of the Asturias
returned to Spain, and was crowned King as Ferdinand vn., and
a number of Bonapartists were driven into exile. " Since our
absence," he said to the old painter, "you too have deserved
exile, nay the rope itself ; but you are a great artist, and we will
forget everything." He sat many times to Goya ; an equestrian
portrait of the King hangs at the Academy of San Fernando, and
another is at the Prado, representing Ferdinand come in hot from
a gallop, his horses being led away in the background, a splendidly
frank piece of characterisation.
Goya was now totally deaf, and most of his old associates
were dead. The greater part of his time he spent in his own
house, in the society of old dilettanti and such few of his friends
as remained. He made a number of drawings for a new series
of Caprices, which he never, however, etched. There is a drawing
at the Print Room of the British Museum, a scene from the
Inquisition, which might well be one of them.
Worn out as he was, feeling he no longer belonged to the
new Court, where he perhaps fancied himself to be looked on
with more disfavour than was actually the case, it is small wonder
24

that he should wish to leave Madrid, where everything reminded
him bitterly of his past triumphs ; he cared nothing now for all the
things which he had once fancied gave him so much pleasure ;
but his energy and love for his work remained. The last work
he did before he went to France was the Saint Joseph of Calasanz
for the Church of San Anton Abad, to which I have already
referred as among his finest canvasses. There was some un
pleasantness on the part of the canons, who objected to pay
the price Goya asked for this picture ; enraged at their haggling,
he refused to continue it, and the Superior, so the story goes,
went down on his knees before the old painter, whom he
eventually appeased, and the picture now hangs in the Church.
Goya left Madrid in 1822, and proceeded to Paris, where he
witnessed the beginning of the great romantic movement which
he himself had indirectly helped to bring about. There is no
evidence of his having come into personal contact with anyone
but Vernet; for Gros, that triste martyr to false feelings of
loyalty to a master, he had a profound admiration, and he was
astonished and delighted with what he saw of the works of
Gericault and Delacroix. But for the overwhelming life of Paris
he felt himself too old ; he preferred to be near his own people,
and settled down among other exiles from Spain, at Bordeaux,
with an old and valued friend, Mme. Weiss. His apathy in
creased with his years, but he was cheered occasionally by the
devoted Mme. Weiss, whose bright enthusiasm for all he used
to love, would bring back, now and again, some of his old
gaiety. . Various paintings belonging to this late period having, in one
way or another, come into the salerooms, are apt to give, perhaps,
to many who are unacquainted with the great Spanish collections,
a somewhat false impression of Goya's powers. Although some
of the portraits of his friends which he painted at Bordeaux,
notably of Moratin and of Pio de Galena, possess extremely fine
qualities of form, and a great style, his rapidly failing eyesight caused
his colour to be heavy and often somewhat crude. It was when
he could use a loup, as, for instance, in the execution of those small
paintings on ivory, (Plate XII.,) which are too little known even
to collectors of his work, and above all, in the most remarkable
compositions of his life, certainly the greatest and most significant
lithographs in the history of the art, known as les Taureaux de
c 25

Bordeaux, that we find all his old powers unimpaired. Like so
many great men who commence a new art, he seems to have
almost exhausted the possibilities of the stone, in these four
superb prints. Their effect upon the rising generation may be
seen in the lithographs of Delacroix, and later in those of Honor6
Daumier. But the old painter was growing restive away from his own
country, and felt a craving to return. He wished, having seen
the work of his younger contemporaries in Paris, to measure
with their work his own frescoes at the Church of San Antonio
de la Florida. He was received in Madrid with every mark of
distinction, and the King begged him to sit to Lopez, so that
he might have the portrait of "the greatest painter Spain has
seen since Velasquez." He was actually painted, but carried off
the portrait after a couple of sittings, lest it be spoiled by Lopez'
"niggling brush."
He returned, however, shortly afterwards to Bordeaux, and
retired still more into solitude. He would sit for days together,
dumb and indifferent ; and again his old rage would come upon
him, and he would draw furiously upon everything which came
under his hand, or practise the juego de Riquitillas with the
five points. He was the object of much admiration and curiosity
in the town on the rare occasions when he wandered abroad,
looking out from under his Bolivar hat with his wonderful heavy-
lidded eyes.
A year after his return in 1828, he died, at the age of eighty-
two, surrounded by a few old friends, exiles,; like himself, from a
country they had all loved with a like passion. He lies buried
in the cemetery of Bordeaux.

26

VIII
With Goya died the whole art and life of the eighteenth
century, and Spain lost its last great painter. His importance
lies not so much in view of his extraordinary personality, but
in the fact of his having invented an entirely new method of
composition, the riches of which have not yet been exhausted,
nor its range equalled. He was the first to aim a decisive blow
at the army of picture makers, who manufactured trees, nymphs,
and tiresome portraits after receipts known to them all. He
brought back to painting the old architectural sense, and square
ness of proportion and design, which the artists of the last century
had allowed to dwindle into the vignette. He saw that nature
composed with even a finer sense of balance than Raphael, and
with the aid of planes of light and shade, delicately adjusted. It
was precisely this rare sense of composition which enabled him
to bring about that revolution in style, which was eventually to
crush the most powerful classical movement since the days of
Poussin. He saw actuality with a highly romantic vision, and with that
spirit of fatality lurking in the rear, which has become so character
istic of nineteenth century thought ; the world to him seemed full
of the weirdness of a sudden transition from darkness to light,
and light to darkness, as though it were for a moment illumined
by a sudden tongue of flame. There is that sense of nervous
ferocity, unveiled as it were for a moment, which culminated in
the fighting horses of Delacroix, in his lions devouring horses and
men, and in the .still more profound work of the sculptor Barye, —
nature caught or missed at a leopard's spring. Goya was
more interested in men and less in things, was more savagely
27

human and less sublimely poetic, than the great Frenchmen ;
he had more curiosity for emotion, and less constancy and
patience. It has seemed remarkable to many of his biographers
that he, who believed so obstinately in a close study of nature,
should also have occupied himself with an occult and purely
imagined side of life; that an atheistical, satanic philosopher
should have cared to represent actually just those superstitions,
a belief in which he so profoundly despised. And indeed it
would seem to be a by no means usual thing, that Goya should
have been able to represent the life about him so completely, and
should yet be able to create a non-existent world of demoniacal
beings., But it must be remembered, that the faculty for creating
form and movement points at an imagination for reality, which
can readily be brought to bear upon purely fantastic subjects.
Goya was in fact among the rare few who are able to make
these seem possible, even natural. He does not carry us into
a mythical world, but brings fancy into the realms of reality,
disappears, as it were, into the darkness, to bring back with
him the monsters he found there ; Hokusai had this same quality
of the imagination, the same cult for the grotesque. Goya shows
us exactly how witches ride through the air, how they goad their
weary brooms through the night, of what monstrous breed they
are and of what foul form ; yet .with so little exaggeration, that
they seemed to have lived as actually as his inquisitors, majas,
and toreros, whereas the spirits calculated to terrify us in the
drawings of Blake, < for instance, leave one unmoved, for the reason
that no representation of form is ever convincing in his work.
"A picture, the effect of which is true, is finished," was a
favourite dictum of his which has been applied since in a sense
different, perhaps, to his meaning. For by this he meant not
only truth of line, tone, or colour, but also truth of movement
and emotion, of observation, in fact. As with Daumier and
Millet, his sense of form was creative, as well as imitative, and
like these he was able to produce an absolutely convincing effect,
through his knowledge and intuition, where a more careful and
conscientious artist would fail ; and it is this imagination for
reality, this power to render nature dramatically and impressively,
that makes of him one of the most significant artists of the last two
hundred years. The humanity grafted on to the tree of beauty
by the gentle Rembrandt, was cultivated by Goya in a more
28

critical and aggressive spirit ; for he was not only the greatest
painter of his age in Spain, but also the most fearless and
advanced thinker.
The mere mention of his name brings up before us a series of
vivid pictures of an already remote period. But the men who
can paint their own times with the insight of Goya, in a manner
paint all times! Each age has the vanity to believe that those
past masters whose reputations are unquestioned in its day, are
among the immortals. So long, however, as any fashion exists
for the painting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Goya's
position is secure.

29

A NOTE ON THE ETCHINCS AND LITHOGRAPHS
OF GOYA
Los Caprichos
The Caprices were probably commenced about 1792-93, and the
prints were first issued to subscribers in 1796. Up to the follow
ing year only seventy-two had been printed, so that only those
prints which appeared before the editions of 1 802, when the whole
of the eighty plates which now form the Caprices were published,
are in their finest state. Goya himself superintended the printing
of the first pulls from his plates, which may be recognised by the
slightly foxy colour of the ink, (black in the subsequent editions,)
and the paper on which they were printed bore no watermark.
Two additional Caprices were etched by Goya for the Duchess
of Alba, but are of extreme rarity, and were never circulated, even
among his own friends.
There are many explanations and surmises with regard to
the precise significance of many of the plates. The curious may
find much interesting information on this point in M. Lefort's
excellent and careful study of the etchings of Goya. Unfortun
ately, as is often the case with very painstaking scholars, he only
weakens the immensely forcible impression made upon one by the
etchings themselves, and sqarcely explains the most obscure
among them. To my own? 'mind, Goya's own explanations,
printed underneath the plar^sr'are more satisfactory.
The Caprices have been re-issued several times of late years
by the Academy of San Fernando, and have been wonderfully
spoiled in the process. 30

Los Desastres de la Guerra.
This series' was never published together during the lifetime
of Goya, and contemporary prints are among the rarest treasures
of the collector ; these exist either before the number of the plate
has been etched upon it, or after the number, which Goya placed
upon the right side at the bottom of the plate. In the edition
published by the Academy of San Fernando, although the
original number is preserved, a fresh one has been added, at the
top of the plate.1 In the first copies of the collected edition, which
bears the date of 1863, the prints were pulled with considerable
care, and are of a reddish colour. A few of these were printed
without the text written underneath, but must not be confused
with the original proofs. These exist both before and after the
aquatint has been added, and are printed with black ink, upon
hand-made paper with a lined surface, and the watermark serra dis
cernible upon it ; whereas the subsequent edition was printed
upon very white paper, with the edges cut, and bearing the mark
J. G. D. The last edition (1892) is on similar paper, but shows
no watermark. In the completed editions published by the Academy of San
Fernando, there are eighty prints in all, but of these the last
fifteen are of a different character to the rest, and might more
fairly have appeared under the name of Caprices.
In the unique collection which Goya offered to his friend
Cean Bermudez, there are two more prints added, which are
included in neither of the editions of the Academy. M. Lefort
was fortunate enough to discover the original plates, which had,
in some unaccountable manner, gone astray. These he had
printed in Paris, and they proved to be of singular interest. The
first represents a huge beast disgorging a crowd of human beings.
The second is significant of the social revolution at hand, — a young
woman representing Liberty, showing the sun, rising above the
horizon, to a working man.
The Tauromachia
The first edition of this series was never, for some obscure
reason, publicly circulated, although it would have been calculated
1 In the prints these numbers appear of course on the left side.
31

to appeal more particularly to the Spanish people, until after the
death of Goya and of his son. These impressions of the plates,
which numbered thirty-three, are extremely brilliant, and may be
recognised by this, and by the watermarks on the paper, which
differ according to their progress, viz. serra, morato, or nolo. The
title of the work, and the descriptions of the different plates, were
printed on a separate sheet, and the title runs as follows :—r
Treinta y tres estampas que representan diferentes suertaes y
actitudes del arte de lidiar los toros, inventadas y grabadoas al agua
fuerte en Madrid por Don Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.
The second edition, which was printed and published by the
Chalcographic Society of Madrid in 1855, is of very inferior
impression, and is easily distinguishable from the first by the fact
of its having the portrait of Goya on the outside of the cover, as
in the case with the later editions of the Caprices, and the title
and text on the back.
A third edition, produced more than thirty years afterwards by
Loizelet, in Paris, contains seven plates which were not included
in the earlier ones. Three of the plates of the Tauromachia are
signed. In the Print Room of the British Museum, there is a set of
the impressions of the first edition, with which it is instructive to
compare that of the reprinted one of 1855.
Los Proverbios
These obscure plates, the date of which is uncertain, were
never published during Goya's lifetime. They first appeared in
1850, and were apparently printed with little care. A second
edition was taken in hand by the Academy of San Fernando in
1864. M. Lefort has pointed out that these superb and impress
ive etchings have been not only ill handled, but absolutely ruined
by the treatment they have received at the hands of their printers.
Eighteen of these were printed in the editions of 1850 and
1 864, but three more, since reproduced in l'Art, may very well be
placed among them.
I am inclined to consider them as among the last etchings by
Goya's hand before his failing eyesight forced him to lay aside the
needle, and this belief is supported by the larger size and broader
execution of the plates themselves. 32

A further edition was printed by the Academy in 1891, the
impressions of which are very inferior.
The Prisoners, the Obras Sueltas, etc.
In addition to the four series already described, there are
several equally important etchings, less frequently to be met
with. Foremost among these must be placed "The Prisoners."
Of these there are three plates ; as in the case of several of
Goya's finest plates, only one contemporaneous set of proofs, that
which he himself gave to his friend Cean Bermudez, is known
to exist. In these three etchings, Goya's powers as an etcher,
and his sympathy for suffering, are demonstrated in a striking
and singularly direct manner.
"La seguridad de un reo no exige tormenlo,"1 he wrote in pencil
on the proof of the first of them, a poor wretch with his hands
bound behind his back, and his feet in irons, bent double with
suffering, in a corner of his cell ; the second plate shows another
prisoner, bound hand and foot, with his neck in a heavy iron
collar, attached by chains to the walls — "Si el delinquente que muera
presto,"* he wrote on this one. The third shows a miserable
pathetic creature, once obviously a fine and robust man, his feet
in irons, and his hands, crossed in front of him, secured by heavy
chains to the walls on either side of him ; a masterpiece of etching,
drawn with a massiveness suggestive of bronze. " Tan barbara la
seguridad como el delito " — such monstrous barbarity of treatment
vies with the crime committed — the imagination for injustice
shown in these plates is not so rare, perhaps, among men who
have themselves been somewhat maimed by life, as among people
more correct, more dignified and more virtuous than Goya. No
anarchist could formulate a more terrible indictment against a
dictatorial government than this pintor del rey.
These three etchings, which, with the impressive fantastic
landscapes, and a plate of a colossal figure seated on a hill
overlooking an immense landscape, are the most impressive of
Goya's etchings, outside the actual series. The third plate of The
Prisoners, which came into the hands of M. Lefort, was printed in
the Gazette des Beaux Arts. Of the first two, which were in
1 The safe-keeping of a prisoner does not necessitate torture.
2 If he be guilty, why not despatch him at once ?
33

the possession of Mr. Lumley, an English collector, a few prints
were printed in 1859, and may occasionally be met with.
The plates known as the obras sueltas, no prints of which
contemporary to Goya are known to exist, and which were etched
at Bordeaux, also belonged to Mr. Lumley, who printed proofs of
them on very coarse, stout paper. These are, a man swinging, a
woman on a swing with a cat watching her from a bough of a tree,
an old bull-fighter with a bull lying down behind him, and two
plates of majas. They are all somewhat crudely etched and bitten,
and were probably the last plates executed by Goya. To complete
the list, are the much earlier etchings after the pictures of Velas
quez, which are scarcely more than very skilful maps, a large and
mediocre plate of a popular scene, a rare print, of which is in the
Print Room of the British Museum, a blind guitar-player tossed
by a bull, (early prints of which are extremely brilliant and very
rare, but the plate has since been reprinted,) and three indifferent
etchings, treating of religious subjects.

The Lithographs
The extreme rarity of Goya's lithographs has made it impossible
for me to see anything approaching a complete collection. The
Print Room of the British Museum, , although unfortunately
without the "Taureaux de Bordeaux,"1 still owns several rare
prints. Of these, the earliest known is a spirited brush drawing
of an old woman spinning, signed and dated Febrero 18 19.
Goya, therefore, was already considerably advanced in years
before he became attracted by this new medium. His first
drawings upon the stone were made in Madrid, and of these the
most important are " Les chiens," a bull attacked by dogs, and a
diabolical scene, a man being dragged along by demons, in the
Print Room of the British Museum, reproduced (Plate II.).
This is not only of great beauty as a drawing, but also has the
further interest of being the first important wash drawing made
upon the stone. Mr. Whistler has since done several of exquisite
beauty ; the unique proof in the Print Room of the British
Museum has been retouched in the less successful parts, with
1 Three very fine prints of the " Taureaux de Bordeaux " were lent by Mr. Charles
Norman to the recent Exhibition of Lithographs at South Kensington Museum.
34

the brush ; it is therefore difficult to judge of it as a pure
lithograph ; Goya evidently never finished the stone, and no other
proof is known to exist. M. Lefort catalogues nine drawings
made upon the stone at Madrid, the woman spinning mentioned
above, a duel between two people dressed in the costume of the
period of Philip iv., the bull attacked by dogs, a young woman
reading to two children with another person in the background,
a monk, a drawing of a young girl sleeping on the knees of an
old woman, with three others on the right, and an old hag seated in
the background, a drunkard seated with a woman, a peasant
trying to overcome a young girl, and the "scene de diablerie,"
the wash lithograph of the British Museum.
It was not until 1825 that Goya, with the help of a strong
magnifying glass, threw the Taureaux de Bordeaux upon the stone.
Three hundred prints of each of these were printed by Gaulon,
and although they are of considerable rarity, are more often to be
met with than other of Goya's lithographs.
These are elfamoso Americano Mariano Cebellos, the Picador
tossed by a bull, the divided arena, and the dibersion de Espaiia,
otherwise known as the Novillos. These are executed in the most
superb style, with a vigour of conception and execution which
Goya himself never equalled in his previous work, — the whole
science of modern composition is to be found in these four
drawings, — and which has never been equalled since. An artist's
early work may generally be said to be his most serious rival, but
in the Taureaux de Bordeaux, Goya, at the age of eighty odd years,
actually surpassed himself. Movement takes the place of form, —
the tremulous excitement of the crowds of spectators watching
the sweaty drama in the ring, the rush to and fro of the toreros,
the stubborn strength of the short powerful goaded brute with
the man impaled on his horns, the dust and glitter and riot of
the scene is rendered in a most extraordinary manner. Three
succeeding generations of artists have helped themselves with
both hands from these prints, but left them not a farthing the
poorer. An indifferent lithograph, which I find it difficult to believe to
be by Goya's hand, a proof of which is in the Print Room of the
British Museum, a scene from a duel, and the portrait of Gaulon,
Goya's printer at Bordeaux, (there is an excellent impression in
the Print Room,) are the only other three lithographs mentioned
35

by M. Lefort as having been executed at Bordeaux. Another
print, evidently a unique one, is in the Print Room of the British
Museum, — a young man in hat and coat, surrounded by demons,
suggestive of a poem by Baudelaire, not catalogued by M.
Lefort.

36

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A. Paintings and Drawings.
Plate i. El entierro de la Sardina. From the painting at
the Academy of San Fernando, Madrid.
2. Fantastic Scene with Demons. From a wash litho
graph, retouched with the brush, in the Print Room
of the British Museum.
3. Two Majas. From a painting in the possession of
the writer.
4. A Bull Fight. From the painting in the Academy
of San Fernando.
5. The Stilt Walkers — Design for Tapestry. From
the painting in the Sala de Goya, at the Prado.
6. The Nude Maja. From thejpainting in the Academy
of San Fernando.
7. The Manolas on the Balcony. From the painting
at the Palace of San Telmo, Seville.
8. Portrait of Asensi. From the painting at the Palace
of San Telmo, Seville.
9. Portrait of F. Bayeu. From the painting in the Prado.
10. Charles iv. of Spain and his Family. From the
painting at the Prado.
11. The Duke of Wellington. - From a drawing in
sanguine at the Print Room of the British Museum.
12. Monk and Witch. From a miniature in the posses
sion of the writer. 37

B. Etchings.
Plate i 3. A Caza de dientes. From Los Caprichos, No. 1 2.
14. Ya tienen asiento. From Los Caprichos, No. 26.
15. Mala noche. From Los Caprichos, No. 36.
16. Y aun no se van. From Los Caprichos, No. 59.
17. No se pude mirar. From Los Desastres de la Guerra.
1 8. Madre infeliz ! From Los Desastres de la Guerra.
19. From the Tauromachia.
20. From Los Proverbios.
Plates 1 and ^-\o are from photographs by Latirent of Madrid.

38

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The Stilt Walkers— Design for Tapestry: in the Prado.

The Nude Af.iyj; in the Academy of San Fernando.

The Manolas on the Balcony: in the Palace of San Telmo, Seville

Portrait of Asensi: in the Palace of San Telmo, Seville.

Portrait of F. Bayeu: in the Prado.

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Charles IV. of Spain and his Family: in the Prado.
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Monk and Witch.

A Caza de dientes: Los Caprichos, No. 12.

Ya tienen asiento : Los Caprichos, No. 26.

Mala noche : Los Caprichos, No. 36.

Y aun no se van: Los Caprichos, No. 59.

Madre infeuz / Los Desastres de la

Guerra.

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