Goya, an account of his life and works

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Memorial of Goya to the Building Committee.

D. Francisco de Goya, Member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando, respectfully shows: That after having put the works of his profession before the public, namely, the paintings just unveiled at the Church of Our Lady of Pilar, his attention had been called to the opinions he hears expressed, containing a criticism prompted by a principle other than that of justice, or governed by the authorised rules of art, which only should form the opinion regarding the work; and although he cannot believe that ill-meant prejudice has gained access to your rectitude, or that you could be led away by impulses little in accord with reason; yet the honour of a professor is a very delicate thing; opinion is what sustains him, all his subsistence depends on his reputation, and when that is obscured by even a light shadow, his fortune is gone; therefore Nature warns him to take care of it by using all the defences within his reach, and to omit the least would be to gain a slight advantage by abandoning the greatest treasure the Creator had entrusted to him.

These principles, accompanied by a sense of wounded honour, the expositor hopes his explanation will make evident to your benignity.

D. Francisco Bayeu asked that the work in the domes might be done by his brother and the expositor, but it was on the understanding that the latter should do one of the parts by himself, as Bayeu himself agreed, considering that the degree of an honoured member of the San Fernando Academy, acquired by the work which had won great renown for him in Madrid, in addition to the work for H.M., would not admit of his absolute subordination to another professor without detriment to his honour. The expositor might be wrong in this, but his error would have the approbation of D. Francisco Bayeu himself, who agreed to it, and was a trustworthy witness of the success that might be expected; and also that of the chief Presbyter Allué, to whom through some people in the city he had manifested the same opinion, to which he agreed.

The expositor feeling sure of said promises, with all good faith in them, proceeded with the Study or Design, and as he wished to be on good terms with D. Francisco Bayeu he took it to him, and received his entire approval: he came with him to this city: he began his work by consulting him regarding the place where the principal façade should be put; the expositor gave way to Bayeu’s opinion. He presented the design to you, who approved them; and in executing them he has only enlarged them.

Taking into consideration these harmonious dealings of the supplicant with D. Francisco Bayeu, which created no motive for resentment, and were governed by the principles and rules prescribed in the first and only conversations regarding the matter, who could think that the expositor had been wanting in respect to Bayeu? There are those who think so, because when the work was well in hand, they wished to make him understand that the agreement with Bayeu was that he should interfere as much as he liked with the expositor’s work, and that the latter should obey him as a subordinate in execution, placing of figures, style, colouring, and so forth; in a word make him a mere executor and mercenary subordinate; but as this was in direct opposition to what had been agreed, it would have been discreditable to his honour to yield, as he would be losing what his merit had won for him, and he could not therefore so humiliate himself, for he knew that the previous offices were sufficient, and that similar ones if continued would not make them anything but his own production. D. Francisco Bayeu’s warning to you that he would not be responsible for his part of the work, only shows that his object was to create a want of confidence that should cause coercion to be exercised, which was justly resisted, for doubt as to skill and success sat ill on D. Francisco, who knew quite well of the honours acquired by the expositor in Madrid, both from the Royalties and from all who had seen his productions, all executed by himself without the slightest direction from any one.

After this, things were artfully circulated against the conduct of the expositor, concerning his temper, proceedings and dealings with Bayeu, he being accused of hauteur, pride and stubbornness. Thereafter malice prepared the blow, long premeditated, of first creating personal disaffection, and then disaffection with his work; as shown by the reception of his work in the dome of the Cathedral of Our Lady. The criticism passed by some persons can only be attributed to this, because all its merit is unobserved and only the defects suggested by caprice or ignorance are sought.

He has suffered with resignation the insults to his honour, he has had the patience to see that the same Bayeu who impaired his credit with insinuating words, and the deceitful complaint that he was responsible for the success of the work, and that he would have to give an account of the confidence placed in him, and that the supplicant was depriving him of this satisfaction because he would not allow him to correct or alter his productions; on other occasions defended the expositor, exalting his merit, acknowledging his skill and the correctness of his painting.

The insinuations of Bayeu have led to the conclusion that the expositor came to this city as a mere subordinate of his, and that notwithstanding this absolute dependence, his proud spirit would not submit to asking for instructions from D. Francisco, even on the ground of friendship and relationship. Two entirely false propositions, which are the cause of all the supplicant’s trouble, because regarding the first he has already told you about the agreements that preceded his coming to Zaragoza, and regarding this and the second, D. Francisco Bayeu cannot deny that, as the result of those agreements, the expositor executed the studies and designs in Madrid, showed them to him, received his approval, and no fault was found. The studies are the complete work, with the same figures, colouring and arrangement to be observed, and the work itself an entire copy of them; and if they passed his examination in Madrid as an act of condescension on the part of the supplicant, emanating from his desire for peace, why, if as he says he was responsible, did he not then point out the defects he might have noted? He did not do so; then what is to be inferred from his having concealed them, if he noticed them? Obviously, and no dissimulating artifice can hide this, it may be gathered that his object was for the expositor to be in error, receive indignant public censure, and lose all the merit and status won by his work. But not wishing to believe such malevolence, because other proofs would be required of it, it must be admitted either that he found no defects in the studies or designs, and therefore the painting on the dome, which is the same, has none, or that D. Francisco was most culpable who, knowing of them, said nothing and allowed them to be copied.

The expositor has never departed from that friendly subordination, nor attempted to oppose D. Francisco Bayeu with the proud spirit of which he is accused; a proof of this is what has been said about the designs; another, the placing of the principal façade; and, lastly, the many visits he paid him at his own house, even though they were not returned. On being informed that the Chapter wished Bayeu to inspect the work on the dome, he arranged for him to do so, which he did, accompanied by the chief Presbyter Allué, and in his presence admitted and acknowledged the perfection of the work, saying that what he had been informed was not true; he also saw the designs for the triangles, and approved of them.

In face of all this, the expositor finds that the same bitter opposition which he had thought would cease, still continued, because the sense of truth may be suspended but not extinguished, but seeing that there is no hope of staying the torrent of provocations that insult his honour and fame, and that an honoured professor cannot stand for ever against the opposition of his enemies, whose only object is to work him ill; notwithstanding that he thought he must finish the work on the triangles, he has at last been undeceived by the letter which the chief Presbyter Allué had just sent to him, of which he sends you a complete copy. After the calumnies he has had to endure, the slights and contempt with which he is treated will not permit him to continue to expose himself to some greater misfortune. He now humbly shows, and at the same time sets forth that he has heard that some figures were to be altered in the dome, and although the expositor cannot be sure that you will allow yourselves to be guided by the declamatory voice of the ignorant public, or the opinion of rivals, the right he has to defend his honour leads him to forestall you. Before a daub is put in the Church that will obscure and deprive it of merit, and leave a permanent witness of the ignorance which is a reproach: which is now the only thing in the matter that interests him, and regarding which he appeals to you—because the will of the owner in his own house does not let go the reins of liberty to such an extent, merely in order to exercise his authority, as to permit without cause, and quite uselessly, great detriment to another on a point so delicate as honour—the expositor thinks the best way to appease the want of confidence he presumes in others and to assert his own opinion, is that a person expert in the art, authorised in his profession, and whose opinion would be impartial, should minutely inspect the work, and when his criticism detects his unskilfulness and error, or testifies to his sufficiency and skill, he will watch with indifference any mutilations executed. Therefore he humbly begs that you will arrange for the work in the dome to be seen by one of the members of the San Fernando Academy, one of the most renowned, as D. Mariano Maëlla or D. Antonio Velazquez, at the expense of the expositor, and after careful inspection his declaration be accepted as testimony.—Zaragoza, March 17, 1781.

Francisco de Goya.

Upon the receipt of this letter, which may be left to speak for itself, the worthy and sorely tried Allué seems to have invited the mediation of Father Salzedo, who was, perhaps, the only man to whom the irascible Goya might be expected to listen. Salzedo wrote the painter a long, earnest epistle, in which he appealed to his better judgment and prudence, cited instances of humility in the life of Christ for his guidance, and demonstrated the practical advantages that would be derived from doing his work to the satisfaction of the Building Committee. The good father did not hesitate to tell his friend that he had taken up a wrong attitude towards his brother-in-law and the Cathedral authorities, and plainly exhorted him ‘with all generosity and Christian charity, to submit your studies to Bayeu’s opinion, in order to please God by your humility, edify the public, and give pleasure to your friends.’ And he adds in conclusion: ‘My dictum, as your greatest admirer, is that you submit to the demands of the Committee, have your studies taken to your brother’s house, and say to him in the best manner possible: This is required by the Chapter—here they are; examine them to your satisfaction, and put your opinion in writing, doing this as God and your conscience shall dictate, etc. And then await the result.’

The foregoing letter was dated March 30, 1781. On April 6, Goya wrote a conciliatory note to Allué, promising to make fresh studies in consultation with Bayeu. Eleven days later the Committee approved the new designs and expressed their pleasure at finding him reconciled to his brother-in-law. But the truce, for such one supposes it to have been, did not last. From a minute in the report of the Building Committee’s proceedings on May 28, it is recorded that Goya, in a ‘not very courteous’ manner, had told Allué that he was only losing his reputation in Zaragoza and desired permission to return to Madrid as soon as possible: ‘The Committee resenting this further affront, resolved: First, that the Professor be paid for his painting. Second, that under no circumstances would he be permitted to continue to paint any more in this Church, but that this need not deter the Director from giving some medals to his wife, in virtue of her being the sister of D. Francisco Bayeu, who was so worthy of this and other considerations from the Committee, by reason of his skilful work in this church.’

The source of the trouble was the failure of the Committee to accept Goya at his own estimate, which was certainly the true one, as the superior of Bayeu. The young painter doubtless did his best to follow the advice of Father Salzedo, but he wore the robes of humility with a bad grace, and was impatient of ignorant and pedantic criticism. His position had become untenable. The painter received his payment, his wife accepted her medals, and they left Zaragoza for Madrid in June 1781.

Goya was indulging no empty boast when he intimated, in his memorial to the Building Committee, that his renown in Madrid was widely acknowledged. He was no sooner back in the capital than the Conde de Florida Blanca sent him a royal order to paint one of the pictures for the Church of San Francisco el Grande. The favoured minister also presented him to the Infante don Luis, the brother of the King and husband of Maria Teresa Vallabriga, who at once conceived a great liking for the painter. He spent a month at the palace of Arenas de San Pedro, and was entertained with great hospitality, while he executed portraits of the Infante’s family. He also painted for the Consejo de las Ordenes several devotional pictures for the Calatrava College at the Salamanca University. In his leisure hours he worked at his picture in the Church of St. Francis. This work was not completed until November 1784. The pictures were ceremoniously unveiled on the 8th of December, in the presence of the King and his court. The occasion was a triumph for Goya. Other pictures had been painted by Bayeu, Mariano Maëlla, Gregorio Farro, Antonio Velazquez, Joseph del Castillo, and Andres Calleja. But their work was eclipsed by the composition in which the magic brush of the Aragonese represented San Bernardino de Siena. The saint is shown with a crucifix in his hand, standing on a rock, preaching, by the light of a brilliant star, to the wonder-filled King Alfonso of Aragon and his court.

Great was the admiration which this picture won for the artist, but, as was usual in Spain, he experienced much difficulty in obtaining payment for his work. In April 1785 we find Goya, Farro, and Castillo memorialising the Conde de Florida Blanca for pecuniary acknowledgment of their labours, explaining that they had each spent two years in making sketches and studies and in the execution of their several pictures, and pointing out that they are obliged to gain their livelihood with their work and ‘have no income or assistance, like others who have the good fortune to serve his Majesty.’ This memorial was despatched with a covering letter from Antonio Ponz, who emphasises the fact that the painters are in need, and hopes that their request will be complied with, ‘in order that these poor men may not lose heart and that reward shall hearten them to fresh work.’ Three months late Florida Blanca arranged with the general directors at the post-office to hand the artists ‘six thousand reals for the present until something else is arranged.’ This payment is duly noted on the memorial, and a later marginal order, presumably in the Count’s handwriting, reads: ‘Pay another 4000 reals to each, although the pictures are nothing wonderful, but theirs are the best.’ This grudging eulogy was in striking contrast with the enthusiastic praise bestowed upon Goya’s pictures for the Salamanca College by the Consejo de las Ordenes, who instructed Jove-Llanos to assure the artist that he was ‘singularly satisfied with the care and diligence with which he had finished the paintings and with their eminent merit.’

In the year of his return to Madrid Goya’s father died, and the painter sent for his mother and his brother Camilo to join him. He obtained for Camilo a chaplainship at Chinchón, but his mother soon wearied of the unaccustomed noise and bustle of the city and retired to Zaragoza, where she lived on a pension of five reals per diem provided by Goya. The artist at this time may have found some difficulty in providing for his household; for his family, if not long-lived, was numerous, but it is unlikely that he ever felt the pinch of poverty. We can well believe that he was insistent in obtaining the reward of his labours, especially when he was working for princes who, in his view, were living a life of gilded pauperism, and the stress which Ponz lays upon the needs of these ‘poor men’ is far removed from the attitude assumed by Goya. In the letter, in which he applies for payment, he does not plead for a dole in relief of his poverty, but demands the remuneration which is justly due to him. This is the only recorded instance of his being in financial straits. From this time his career is one of eventful and interrupted but assured success. Fame and fortune attended him on either hand. In 1785 Andreas Calleja died, and Goya succeeded him as deputy director of the Academy of San Fernando, with an annual salary of twenty-five doubloons. Four years later, on the death of Cornelio van der Goten, Charles IV., who had just succeeded his father Charles III., appointed him a Painter of the Chamber, with a salary of 15,000 reals, which was increased in 1799 to 50,000 reals a year, with the rank of first painter to the King.

In this period of his greatest prosperity, Goya was courted not only for the sake of his art, but also for his personal qualities. He was popular with men, while women eagerly contended for his favour. A revolutionary, he became the friend of the King, while the Queen and the Countess of Benavente delighted in his companionship. He went from palace to palace and from fête to fête, observing, working, studying, revelling in the life by which he was surrounded and in which he played a full part. This lover of freedom could breathe in an atmosphere of corruption; this son of the soil could play the courtier with a will. ‘If we are to understand his genius rightly,’ says C. Gasquoine Hartley, in A Record of Spanish Painting, ‘all contradictions are solved when we realise that he was an onlooker at, rather than an operator in, many incidents of his life.’ This half-hearted attempt to condone the irregularity of his life at this period is at variance both with what we know of Goya’s temperament and with the facts. He was an actor as well as an interpreter of the scenes which he represents, and many of his pictures, which are regarded as biting satires of the follies and vice of his age, are quite as plausibly explained as the expression of personal animus and party feeling. Certain people have discovered in Goya a moralist after the style of Hogarth, using his brush in the sacred cause of morality, to expose the vices of his time, laying bare the baseness of his contemporaries in order to inspire contempt and horror of their conduct, stigmatising the habits of the court of Charles IV., and castigating the hypocrisy, ignorance, and immodesty of the men and women who surrounded the royal family. But while in the later works of his mature age he employed his brush and needle to this purpose, it is more probable, as Lafond concludes, that under Charles IV. and Maria Luisa, Goya drew and engraved, as La Fontaine wrote his fables: for the pleasure of producing them, from the necessity of multiplying them, not troubling himself about questions of morality or of the lessons which his pictures should teach. ‘The truth is,’ says his French biographer, ‘that, mixed up in the intrigues of the Court and involved in personal quarrels, he takes the part now of one, now of another, using his pen to scratch his adversaries of to-day who are his allies to-morrow.’ In all his works he imbued the subject with the quality of his thought as well as with the charm of his colour and the skill of his draughtmanship. Of all the artists of his class, says the Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, none put into their studies more meaning and personal opinion. If he painted a scene he attached to it a proverb or a significant ejaculation; if he produced a portrait he left upon the likeness his opinion of his model; if in many cases it amounted to a positive caricature, he could no more help seeing his subject in that guise than his subject could avoid so appearing to the artist.

With regard to Goya’s personal life at this period it is not necessary to say much, but it would seem to have been consistent with our knowledge of him and of his surroundings. Lafond reminds us that his wife bore him twenty children and continued to love him in spite of his endless infidelities. Mr. Rotherstein declares that while it would be idle to pretend that he was faithful to his wife, it is undeniable that he was deeply attached to her during her lifetime. With the single exception of his devotion to the unfortunate Duchess of Alba, says the same writer, his intrigues seem to have been as much caprices on the part of his sitters as his own. But these caprices were, as it has been said, endless. ‘We have only to look at the master’s self-portrait,’ writes Richard Muther, ‘at this man with the bull-neck and full, sensual lips, to understand that the countless stories which got about on the subject of his relations with the women of high society in Madrid were not all inventions of the fancy. Goya must have been a terror to all their husbands. In all the most aristocratic salons the women were at his feet; and perhaps they appreciated the difference between this sturdy man of the people and their decadent lords and masters. In a word, Goya at this time not only painted Rococo, but lived himself to its full the wild passionate life of that Rococo period.’ And again, in the Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, we get the shrewd and common-sense conclusion that ‘Goya was a man of his age. He neither aspired to the category of an ascetic nor opposed the customs and tendencies of his time, and his age being one of transition, without fixed principles, he accommodated himself to its duties and its weaknesses, never for a moment failing in his domestic obligations, yet not refusing those outside favours that presented themselves to him.’

It would have been strange indeed if Goya had resisted the temptations by which he was surrounded; it is remarkable under the circumstances that he remained unspoiled. The King, as we have seen, was his friend, the Queen confided to him her most delicate secrets, the all-powerful Prince de la Pax made him welcome at Aranjuez, and the most distinguished women of the day delighted in entertaining him. Writing to his friend Zapater about his success at this period, he said: ‘I had established for myself an enviable mode of life; I no longer danced attendance in an ante-chamber; if anybody wanted anything of mine he had to come to me. I was much sought after, but if it was not anybody in a high position, or to oblige a friend, I worked for none.’ He was a privileged guest at the palaces of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz and of San Carlos; Brunetti and the Countess of Benavente fêted him. His relations with the beautiful and vivacious Duchess of Alba are too well known to call for more than a passing mention. The artist painted at least a dozen portraits of the Duchess, in one of which he presents himself in company with his inamorata. He introduced her piquant features into the frescoes of San Antonio de la Florida. She is the model for the nude and clothed Maja which hang in the Prado Museum. Tradition has it that the clothed Maja was painted to meet the wishes of the Duke, who expressed a desire to inspect the master’s work. The story is almost comical to any one who has stood in front of the two pictures. Nothing but the most conventional views upon the subject of the nude could make the naked study more offensive in the eyes of a husband than the one in which the young woman, ‘naked in spite of her dress,’ appears to challenge the continence of all the St. Anthonys of Christendom.

Of these pictures Mr. Charles Ricketts writes in an illuminating chapter on The Masterpieces of the Prado: ‘Goya’s two pictures are still vivacious and fresh. In “La Maja,” a nude, he has painted the sensuous waist, the frail arms, the dainty head of the Duchess thrown upon pillows, contrasting in their gray whiteness with the gleam upon her flesh. In the other we note the same grace of pose, a more summary workmanship, touches of colour—too many perhaps. The Duchess of Alba (La Maja) reclines on her divan in her rich bolero and white duck trousers of a toreador or Spanish dandy. We pause, we are astonished and charmed; we wonder how such a thing was possible. Her beauty and daring live on the two canvases; this one scandal in the nineteenth century has endowed the world with those pictures, and they are now in the Prado. So ends the adventure.’

The scandal which associated Goya’s name with that of the Duchess of Alba, fanned, it may be suspected, by the jealousy of the Countess of Benavente, could not be concealed, and by the order of Maria Luisa, the Duchess was banished in 1795 to the seclusion of her estate at San Lucar. The painter immediately obtained from the King a prolonged leave of absence and accompanied her into exile. On the journey to San Lucar an accident happened to their carriage, and Goya with his characteristic energy set to work to repair the defect. An iron bar belonging to the coach was buckled; a fire had to be lighted and the iron made straight. The heat and the unwonted exertion which the operation entailed was followed by a chill, and from this chill resulted the deafness which, in later years, became complete. The Duchess was recalled in the following year—this exercise of royal clemency being apparently the only means of securing the return of the painter to Madrid—and died in the same year in the fullness of her exquisite and inspiring beauty.

The period of Goya’s greatest popularity (1780-1800) was the period of his greatest activity. He was high in the favour of the Court. Much of his time was absorbed in painting portraits of his royal and aristocratic patrons. At the same time he never lost touch with the commonalty, nor his powers to depict, with sympathy and understanding, the life of the country—the bustling, laughing, loving, wrangling, vibrating life he loved and to which, by birth and temperament, he belonged. It is probable that he was never a courtier at heart. His effrontery and uncompromising independence, combined with incisive wit and physical strength, made him at once a singular and incongruous but popular figure in the Court circles, while his frank camaraderie and his amazing prowess in the national games and feats of strength, and above all, the boldness and skill of his demeanour in the bull-ring—in which he is said to have been the equal of the professional espada—won for him the enthusiastic admiration of the hero-worshipping people of Madrid. He seems to have been at no pains to disguise the real bent of his nature. The story runs that he would frequently leave the royal palace to pass the night in the most disreputable taverns and bodegas in the suburbs of Madrid, drinking, dicing, and merrymaking with the night-birds of the capital.

But Goya’s artistic output showed no signs of falling off either in quality or amount, and his marvellous rapidity of workmanship enabled him to produce an almost incredible number of canvases. In a biography and review of this size and scope it is not possible to present a leisured review of his pictures. We must be content with a brief notice of the more important among them, but the illustrations at the end of the volume which are produced in such wealth, and which constitute the chief interest of this book, will speak more eloquently than words. Of Goya’s methods of painting many stories are told, from which it might be concluded that he employed for the purpose every instrument known to art with the solitary exception of a brush. Gautier, who declared his mode to be as eccentric as his talent, has exhausted all the facts and legends relating to his brush-work (if so it can be called) in the following vivacious descriptive passage: ‘He kept his colours in tubs, and applied them to the canvas by means of sponges, brooms, rags, and everything that happened to be within his reach. He put on his tones with a trowel, as it were, exactly like so much mortar, and painted touches of sentiment with large daubs of his thumb. From the fact of his working in this offhand and expeditious manner, he would cover some thirty feet of wall in a couple of days. This method certainly appears somewhat to exceed even the licence accorded to the most impetuous and fiery genius; the most dashing painters are but children compared to him. He executed, with a spoon for a brush, a painting of the “Dos de Mayo,” where some French troops are shooting a number of Spaniards. It is a work of incredible vigour and fire.’

The vigour and fire which Gautier finds in this picture is to be observed in varying degree in all Goya’s works. These qualities were the results of his temperament, which moved him to fling his ideas upon the canvas before they could escape him, and imbued him with a constant desire to be rid of them and at work on something else. ‘His whole art,’ says Muther, ‘seems like a bull-fight; for everywhere he sees before him some red rag, and hurls himself upon it with the fury of the toro.’ Nor did his sitters escape the consequences of his impetuosity. Many of his portraits were painted in a day, but the sitting lasted not a few hours merely but the whole of the day, during which time, Mr. Rothenstein tells us, ‘Goya, inexorable towards his model, worked in absolute silence with extraordinary concentration and vigour.’ The same writer relates, as an example of his nervousness and irritability in his studio, the story that the Duke of Wellington so exasperated Goya while he was painting his portrait by passing comments upon his work while the picture was in progress, that he took a sword from the wall and forced his noble sitter to beat a retreat from his studio. Other authorities state that it was with a pair of pistols that he put the English Duke to flight. After all, the weapon is not a material point in the story.

A man who worked at this pressure might be expected to develop a tendency to scamp his work, but while many of Goya’s compositions are mere sketches, they are all finished according to his theory that ‘a picture is finished when its effect is true.’ The many compositions Goya executed for the Countess of Benavente, until recently at the Alameda Palace, comprised the most representative exhibition of Goya’s genius. The collection included many pictures painted with exceptional delicacy. The most important of these pictures, the Romeria de San Isidro, is a wonderful canvas containing a mass of details which astonish by their clearness and finish. The ‘Coach attacked by Brigands’ is one example among many of his skill in catching an instantaneous motion and transfixing it upon the canvas. Among the Alameda paintings are some repetitions of the designs for the tapestry factory. The exuberant gaiety in these pictures is in amazing contrast with the ‘San Bernard’ or the terrifying cartoon of ‘Saturn devouring his Children.’ Goya can be simple and bizarre, idyllic and grotesque, fascinating and appalling—his vitality emphasises every facet of his imagination. The examples of phases of his many-sided vision are inexhaustible. He makes demons terrible by their humanity, and men and women horrible by their diabolical sinisterism. He paints you a fête or a funeral, a picnic or a hanging, with the same facility and artistic assurance; be the mood he would portray gay or gloomy, the scene brilliant or shuddersome, the beauty that of a child, a blushing maiden or a dazzling Maja, he never hesitates, nor does he often come short of success.

In his portraits he is a realist—versatile, vivid, often unflinching in his brutality, unsurpassed, when he wills it, in perfection of treatment and intention. His finish is the fulfilment of his purpose, which has nothing in common with finish in the sense of elaboration. True, many of his likenesses are ‘washed in with a certain impatience, almost as if the painter had tired of his subject’ (C. Gasquoine Hartley, in A Record of Spanish Painting); true again, the restlessness of his temperament made him inclined to seize on a characteristic rendering of pose and feature: but his portraits reflect the idea in his mind; they express the always very definite something he has to say; the effect is true and the picture is finished. It was his method to arrange his canvas, his model and all his accessories, and then remain wrapped in profound reflection. When his study of his model was ended he set to work, either to materialise his inspiration in a swift realisation of a personality, or to produce a suave, lingering piece of workmanship which recalls the refinement of Gainsborough in its elaborate, exquisite detail.

Goya, by virtue of his portraits, has been rightly acclaimed the legitimate descendant of Velazquez, and, like the great Court painter of a previous century, he is a magnificent exception. But the comparison between the two masters cannot be pushed too far. Velazquez was a realist to whom the world appeared as a beautiful vision; Goya was a realist to whom life was always a drama and not infrequently a satiric melodrama played in the tempo of a farce. Velazquez depicted men and women at their noblest; Goya, when he was in the mood, detected the worst that was in them and he exposed it with a flourish. The grandeur of the times which we discern in the portraits of Velazquez is the grandeur of the artist’s conception and treatment. The equestrian effigies of Philip III. and Philip IV. reveal the magnificence and nobility of conscious kingship which neither of the monarchs possessed; the royal likenesses convey to us a prosperity which impoverished Spain did not enjoy under the rule of his kingly sitters. Thus it is curious to find that some critics, but particularly the Conde de la Viñaza, should see in Goya’s work a similar determination to idealise and glorify the characters of his royal patrons. ‘The celebrated canvas of the family of Charles IV.,’ writes Goya’s latest Spanish biographer, ‘together with the equestrian portraits’—the composition of which, as Mr. Rothenstein reminds us, he may well have learned from Velazquez—‘of Maria Luisa and her husband, of Ferdinand VII. and Godoy, show forth a grandeur of mind and intellectual and moral qualities which these people did not possess. The Godoy represented by Goya as though he were a sort of Marquis de Pescara, although he never wore his uniform except at sham fights, recalls the fact that Velazquez also, flattering the ridiculous vanity of the Count-Duke of Olivarez, painted his portrait in a suit which was not his own.... Goya painted moral life hyperbolically idealised in his effigies of the kings, because he was painter to the Household and protected by the Crown and the Court, although he was rather the protector of his protectors. In all the other portraits of statesmen, politicians, literati, scientific men, actors, bull-fighters, priests and artists, Goya harmonised exactly the body and the mind. How marvellously he caught the faces of the men of great minds! How beautifully the moral and intellectual qualities of the person represented are shown!’

A second and more cautious reading of the foregoing passage was required to convince us that it was written without sarcasm, and was meant to express a sober estimate of the qualities which the writer discovered in the pictures referred to. Personal taste, as we have remarked elsewhere, counts for much in the whole field of art, and in the opinion which is quoted the Conde de la Viñaza has the field practically to himself. Nearly all Goya’s critics and admirers are united in their appreciation of the merciless and remorseless frankness, the pitiless satire, the mocking, saturnine faithfulness of the likenesses. Sir William Stirling-Maxwell misses the point of the equestrian portrait of Charles IV. when he remarks that ‘the poor imbecile king, in the blue uniform and cocked hat of a colonel of the guards, mounted on a sober brown charger,’ is ‘an example of the dignity which may be conferred, by a skilful hand, on the most ordinary features and expression, without sacrificing the resemblance.’ But who beside Viñaza and Stirling-Maxwell could detect anything but a burlesque of kingly dignity in this grandly-uniformed, coarsely-made and coarse-faced Bourbon who sits ‘asthmatic and fat, upon his fat asthmatic horse, with his fat asthmatic dog’—a study which moves a German critic to remark, ‘How like a Moloch he appears, an evil god who has battened upon the life-blood of his people.’

The portraits of his sensuous, passion-ridden queen are equally fearless, true even to brutality. Maria Luisa was a courtesan seated upon the throne of Spain. Velazquez, it has been wisely said, redeemed the face of Mariana of Austria in his portrait by making her unapproachable icy pride the keynote in his composition. Goya extenuates nothing. He shows the queen, décolletée to vulgarity in her insolently vulgar gown, with gleaming arms and bosom exposed as a snare, which is watched over by the greedy, hawk-like eyes. It is the woman she was, the ‘woman who loved men better perhaps than she was loved by them,’ the courtesan that the artist knew and flattered and despised. Of the picture of the ‘Family of Charles IV.,’ with its fourteen life-size figures, it has been written that it ‘mirrors the hidden merriment with which Goya recorded the Court history.’ Here is a faithful exposition of Goya’s estimate of the Spanish royal family; an estimate which has never been so remorselessly expressed by any other delineator of royal groups. They are depicted in their resplendent uniforms and rich gowns, they have all the dignity that is derived from gorgeous trappings, but Goya has not spared them, or us, a tittle of their pitiful stupidity, their coarse insolence, their mental and moral degeneracy. ‘The heads are admirably painted, as Gautier admitted, ‘and are full of life, delicacy and intelligence’; but the French critic’s general verdict upon the group represented is his best tribute to the genius of the painter;—‘a grocer’s family who have won the big lottery prize.’

The more closely one studies these royal portraits the more one becomes convinced of their truth. To-day they remain as real to us as the sympathetic, Velazquezesque likenesses of the painter Bayeu in the Prado, or of Dr. Peral in the National Gallery. It is almost impossible for any one to be in a position to award the palm for supreme excellence among Goya’s portraits, for besides being so numerous, they are widely distributed among the aristocratic families of Spain, and many are practically inaccessible to the student. There are fewer than two dozen of his portraits in the Prado, only two in the National Gallery, and one in the Louvre. Few people are familiar with more than a certain number of his portraits. For this reason there are many different opinions as to the comparative merit of his pictures, but the individual opinions all constitute a remarkable tribute to the painter’s genius in catching the likeness and reflecting the character of his subjects.

Of the portrait of Villanueva, Señor Caveda writes that ‘it not only faithfully represents the features of the famous architect and the expression of him as a whole, but reveals in him the goodness of soul that animates him, and the noble simplicity of character which is so skilfully transmitted in all Goya’s impressions.’ Señor Mariano Nonqués, referring to the portrait of Moratin, now in the possession of Don F. Silvela, declares that ‘it may rightly be said without any appearance of exaggeration that this effigy is painted with the mind and with a spontaneity which is clearly seen, since there is nothing in it that reveals difficulty in the work, or any preconceived idea of imitating any other painter in its execution,’ and he adds that, by reason of the individuality it discloses, it should be considered one of the best likenesses painted by Goya. According to the painter Carlos Luis de Ribera, the genius of ‘La Tirana’ may be seen in the head of the portrait of the distinguished actress, Rosario Fernandez. ‘In it, as in all his (Goya’s) works,’ says this authority, ‘there is that air of truth which so few painters have attained; there is brilliancy and freshness without pretension or exaggeration, the model is simple and convenient, and while it makes no show of strength it is not weak. Its execution springs as much from sentiment as that of all his canvases, because it was never sought after by Goya, but was the consequence and result of his spontaneity and intuition.’ Again, of his portrait of José Luis Munarriz, the eminent critic, Don Francisco Maria Tubina, writes: ‘There is something on the canvas in addition to perfection in the technique, the beautiful development of the subject and the exact likeness; the immaterial part must be recognised and appreciated—the inner vigour Goya gives the character, which illumines the features with the glow of the soul. Munarriz is represented to us in the picture as the fancy imagines him, as we see him in his biography, ingenious and lively in thought, distinguished in form, kind and firm in temperament, prudent in judgment, and with a mind always directed upon things which elevate and ennoble. Munarriz the literary man,’ he says in conclusion, ‘is the Munarriz of the picture, the one being explained by the other.’ And read, also, what the Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones contains concerning the two portraits of Doña Antonia de Zárate, now in the possession of Señora Vinda de Albacete: ‘But where Goya shows the most exquisite sensibility and profound psychology is in these two portraits of one person, in which he incorporates the whole story of a dreamer swayed in life and death by the highest ideals, a woman of a race of poets and artists, Antonia de Zárate. Though in the first portrait he represented her smiling and in perfect health, in the second he knew her existence was undermined by a treacherous disease which was to cause her death. Never have we felt more deeply the impression of pathos than before this presentment of a soul rather than a person, before this face enveloped in transparent veils, with life showing in the eyes, and in that life a melancholy realisation of approaching death.’

Goya’s portraits, as we have said, are so numerous that it is only possible to deal here with a brief selection of them. In his large and varied gallery he displays so much versatility that it appears impossible that they could all have been conceived by the same mind and painted by the same hand. His treatment is alternately rough to the verge of violence and as smooth as the work of a miniaturist; his tones are crude and heavy or luminous and glowing, as the sitter appeals to his mind; he makes his queen a confessed harlot and his little grandson the incarnation of dainty boyhood. The portrait of his wife, now in the Prado, is a work of the highest excellence, so are the beautiful representations of the Duchess of Alba, the vivid impression of Asensi, the delicious portrait of the Marquesa de Pontejos, the Gainsboroughesque study of the Conde de Florida Blanca, the equestrian painting of General Palafox, the dashing, almost contemptuously vivid likeness of Godoy, the striking portrait of Guillemardet so enthusiastically eulogised by M. León Legrange (Gazette des Beaux-Arts), and those of the Duke of Osuna, of Felix Colón, Jove-Llanos and Ventura Rodriguez, of Martincho and Romero, the bull-fighters, of Pignatelly, General Urrutia, of the royal children, and of himself, painted when still young—each portrait bears the stamp of Goya’s genius, each expresses an individuality in his individual style, each is finished because its effect is true.

Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, the most loyal friend of the son of Maria Luisa, has won the admiration of many painters and critics. The head is beautifully painted, the posing is natural and graceful, the figure lives and breathes. For this ‘miracle of art,’ as Viñaza styles it, Goya used only a few colours, which he spread over the canvas with an energetic and grandiose brush, each stroke being the expression of an æsthetic thought and the perfection of the technique of painting. The portrait, ‘which legitimises Goya’s descent from Velazquez,’ is said to be like the work of Rembrandt in its clare-obscure, of Watteau in its correctness, and of Titian in its delicacy and freshness. But there is no end to the expressions of admiration which Goya has inspired. Eduardo Rosales went to Zaragoza annually to visit Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, and on one occasion, when he had been lifted by a friend that he might study the face of the portrait, he is reported to have exclaimed, ‘My friend, such painting will never be seen again.’

In 1798 Goya was intrusted with the decoration of the newly built church of San Antonio de la Florida, which had sprung into existence in 1720 as a primitive hermitage, had been destroyed when the El Pardo road was made in 1768, was re-erected two years later, and in 1792 was replaced by the present elegant edifice, which was built at the expense of the royal patrimony, after the plans of the celebrated architect, Ventura Rodriguez. The outside of the building is of good architectural style, the interior is small and elegant, and well suited to the rank and fashion which frequented it. The Church was opened for worship on July 1, 1799, and we read that ‘Madrid went wild with excitement at the glory of Goya’s achievement.’

Don Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado, who supplied the text for the volume of aquafortis engravings of these frescoes which D. José Moria Galvan y Candela executed in 1897, tells us that they were wholly in accord with the conditions of the time. But the sentiment of Mr. Rothenstein is nearer to the truth when, in speaking of these frescoes, he says that he can remember nothing which gave him so clear an idea of Goya’s cynicism. ‘Imagine,’ he writes, ‘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 frangipane rather than incense, and it must be admitted that Goya’s frescoes do not strike a discordant note in this indecorously holy place.’

The subject of the main composition covers the cupola, and contains upwards of a hundred figures considerably over life-size. The picture illustrates the miracle ascribed to St. Anthony of Padua, who restored to life the corpse of a murdered man in order that he might reveal the name of his assassin and rescue an innocent man who was about to be executed as the perpetrator of the crime. The scene is enclosed by a painted railing which surrounds the entire composition. We see the saint standing on an eminence against a luminous background. His life-giving words have just restored the corpse to consciousness. The man leans forward, supported in the arms of a companion, with his hands clasped in an attitude of profound veneration, his expressive face looking fixedly upon the saint with a gaze of surprise and gratitude. The central figures are surrounded by a motley crowd of men, women, and children, some of whom express their astonishment by eloquent gestures, while others appear indifferent to the miracle that is being performed, and one or two frolicsome boys are seen astride the figured railing. On the spandrils, the intrados, the curvilineal triangles of the arches, and behind the high altar, are groups of angels and cherubs. The angels are beautifully clothed and almost wanton in their human loveliness, the babes are entirely without the illusion of divine origin. It has been said that in this composition Goya perfectly interpreted the spirit of the Church de la Florida; certain it is that these angels with ‘the skin of a camellia, eyes of fire, and the beauty of a harlot,’ which move with audacious freedom of attitude, ‘not in pure spheres of blessedness, but in an atmosphere of atoms of gold illuminated by an Asiatic sun, are the strangest and most beautiful creatures that ever adorned a consecrated house.’

‘The frescoes of la Florida,’ comments C. Gasquoine Hartley, ‘are yet another witness of the truthful humour of Goya’s insight, but not one of his countrymen realised the irreverent irony of his work.’ ‘The figures are as full of piquant intention,’ declared Richard Muther, ‘as can be found in the most erotic paintings of Fragonard.... It is an artistic can-can; it is Casanova transferred to colour. All that the Church painting of the past had created is despised, forsaken; and this satire upon the Church and all its works was written in the land of Zurbarán, of Murillo.’ The Conde de la Viñaza alludes to Goya as an artist who painted pictures with religious subjects, but not religious pictures. ‘I do not know,’ he says, ‘a more profane master than this Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vicelli and Veronese rolled into one.’ And he instances his monumental painting at la Florida to illustrate his contention: ‘An admirable energy, the most splendid scale of tones. What relief! What a magic of colour! What a beautiful lesson the light of nature receives there! On the other hand, what lack of religious feeling and spirituality in those frescoes!’ And having denounced in the angels the silkiness of their skins, the brilliance of their eyes, and the wantonness of their beauty, he adds, ‘the miracles of the exemplary man of Padua are familiarly treated as a spectacle of wandering rope-dancers might be!’

It has been said that the King was incensed against the artist for introducing renowned ladies of his court in the faces of the winged archangels, and it is generally believed that the most aristocratic persons of the capital are represented in the frescoes, but if Charles IV. resented his choice of models, he had a most amiable way of expressing his displeasure. Goya himself, writing to Zapater, admitted that ‘the King and Queen are mad on your friend Goya,’ but the madness took the form of a royal order, dated October 31, 1799, which reads: ‘H.M. wishing to reward your distinguished merit and to give in person a testimony that may serve as a stimulus to all professors, of how much he appreciates your talent and knowledge of the noble art of painting, has been pleased to appoint you his chief painter of the Chamber, at a yearly salary of 50,000 reals, which you will receive from this date free of rights, and also 500 ducats a year for a carriage: and it is also his pleasure that you occupy the house now inhabited by Don Mariano Maëlla should he die first,’ etc.

Certainly the frescoes in his own day were extolled as the most important work ever done by Goya’s marvellous brush; he closed the eighteenth century with creations that won for him his greatest contemporary fame and raised him to the summit of his art. If nothing could be further removed from religious inspiration, nothing human could reveal more enchanting beauty, more exquisite grace. These frescoes were praised as ‘an inimitable symphony of light and colour.’ It is not in our province either to accept or to refute the claim that ‘they raise the most common things of Goya’s time to the high spheres of Spanish mystic realism.’ Goya’s contemporaries did not realise that the paintings outraged the canons of propriety and probability, and in later times Señor Rada finds that the painter, in this work, rises always to the regions of mystery, where only genius can penetrate, and responds to the peculiar influence of a temple which seems rather to inspire loving human aspirations, than mystic thoughts of infinite abstraction. ‘Apart from the fact that Goya was a believer and respectful to all that pertained to religion,’ urges Señor Rada, ‘in the principal subject of this painting (the “Cupola”) he is as manifestly mystic and delicate as any painter of the spiritual school. In the central group the risen man partakes of both realism and religious unction. The expression could not be better, nor could the attitude of the saint be more dignified. Apart from this in the other groups, he copied what he was wont to observe in popular gatherings, as he saw it, as it was, as it always will be.’

Goya’s Spanish apologists may well be justified in their contention that his originality forced him to disregard the classic rules and mannerism of traditional Spanish religious art. They see no impropriety or extravagance in surrounding the figure of a revered saint with a crowd of roysterers, prostitutes, cut-purses and Manzanares rascals. And, after all, the point is scarcely worth arguing. Again, when it is protested that Goya’s archangels and seraphim were rather beautiful women than angelic spirits—well! what better conception could there be of angels than the perfections of a charming woman? That is Señor Rada’s retort: ‘The naturalist Goya, surrounded by the seductive beauty of his time, could not conceive or even presume that the chosen beings who sing eternal praises in the ethereal regions of celestial glory were any different. More in accord doubtless, with our pious traditions and with Christian spiritual belief are the glories of Juan de Juanes and Murillo; but each artist has his peculiar temperament as well as his special gamut of colour, and to ask Goya to paint angels like those great Christian artists would be the same as asking the painters of a previous epoch to paint pictures of popular scenes like Goya’s.’

The logic of the foregoing is presumably sound, although the conclusion seems to us to support those who contend that Goya’s temperament rendered him an unsuitable person to translate religious episodes into colour. We remember, as Señors Rada and Pedro de Madrazo assert, that Goya was ‘a believer’ and ‘respectful in everything pertaining to religion,’ and we recall also that in their joint will the painter and his wife describe themselves as ‘firmly believing and confessing the mystery of the Holy Trinity ... and all other mysteries and sacraments, believed and confessed by our Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Mother Church, in whose true faith and belief we have lived.’ But we cannot, at the same time, forget that Goya’s detestation of the priesthood was violent and unresting. If he caught the spirit of ecstasy in his picture of San José de Calasanz receiving the Host at the hands of a priest, he also painted a representation of Santas Justa and Rufina. This picture has been described as the most profane and inappropriate work of the Aragonese genius. It is stated that he selected as his models a pair of well-known cocottes of Madrid, giving, it is said, the caustic, uncanonical explanation, ‘I will cause the faithful to worship vice!’ Goya may have called himself an orthodox conformer to the national church, but his contempt for his ecclesiastical patrons and those who practised the devotions which he mechanically professed, is avowed.

But apart from their religious significance, or their lack of it, these frescoes of the Church of San Antonio de la Florida reveal Goya at his best as a daring draughtsman and fine colourist. The energy, the spontaneity, the light and the relief, the magic of his paint—all are revealed in this work, which occupied him only three months. And what better proof could one desire of the truth of his own contention: ‘In nature colour exists no more than line—there is only light and shade.’ Goya knew how to produce abundant life with simply white lead, the black of smoke, green and vermillion. Richness of colour does not consist in an infinite variety of tints, but in the harmonious variety of tones and in the skilful selection of the key in which the picture is painted. Here Goya surpassed himself in the effect he produced with a palette that was severe in its simplicity, but the processes employed by the master to obtain his wonderfully vivid and charming tones were so varied that they cannot be exactly determined. Of the result, Paul Lafond writes, it is ‘as true as Velazquez, as energetic and as light as Rembrandt, as delicate as Titian, as spiritual as Tiepolo, with infinite perspectives like those of Tiepolo and Veronese, and as refined as Watteau.’

The painting of the frescoes of San Antonio de la Florida won for Goya, as we have seen, the coveted office of first painter to the Court. It was at this same time he began to paint less and to take up the needle as a new force of expression. His first work was the series of designs known as ‘Los Caprichos’ in which the spectator is transported into some ‘unheard of, impossible, but still real world’—a world peopled with dapper majas, handsome hidalgos, hideous old men and hags more horrible than the witch of Endor, gluttonous priests, spectres and sorceresses, devils and desperadoes and corpses, all the myriad diabolical and terrifying shapes and phantasies in which Goya set down his vision of humanity. The origin, the inspiration and the object of these etchings are still matters of speculation. It is generally agreed that the painter executed the first drafts for these plates after his return from San Lucar. His deafness aggravated by a serious illness, from which he made a slow and painful recovery, obliged him to give up the fatiguing work with palette and brush, and it may well be that he, whose spirit never rested and whose hand was never idle, fell into a habit of preserving his impressions on paper in order to distract his tormented imagination from brooding over his sufferings. It was at a later date that he transferred these drawings on to the copper plates. It may be reasonable to assume, as some have done, that the part of philosopher which he had developed leisurely during his days at Court, as well as the vein of moralist and castigator of vice, was quickened in him by satiety and physical pain. The Conde de la Viñaza appears to believe that Goya suddenly awakened to his power as a caricaturist, and that, irritated at the moral ugliness of his contemporaries, and at the vile coterie which surrounded the King and Queen, he began to inveigh unflinchingly against lasciviousness, covetousness, rapacity, hypocrisy, and ignorance, against the court parasite and the court harlot, the miser and the monk, the women who sold their daughters and the monsters who bought them, against insolent pomp, ecclesiastical rottenness and venal stupidity. Yet probably the view of Gautier is nearer the truth. He assumes that the now popular painter was ‘merely producing so many capricious sketches, when he was in truth drawing the portrait and writing the history of Spain of former days, under the belief that he was serving the ideas and creed of modern times. His caricatures will soon be looked upon in the light of historical monuments.’

Extraordinary as these pictures are by reason of their fancy, their beauty, their saturnine wit, their ‘Gargantuan spirit,’ as well as by the technical skill and originality they display, they are even more extraordinary by reason of the favour with which they were at first received by the people against whom they were directed. At first the plates were issued separately and were passed from hand to hand among the etcher’s friends. But in 1799, probably the year in which the series was completed, a prospectus was issued, advertising the publication of an edition of seventy-two plates. Goya, for unknown reasons, objected to this edition, and the issue was never made. In the meantime the satire of these tumultuous cartoons was discovered by the objects of his ridicule. Godoy, the old Duchess of Benavente, the Queen’s favourites, were the first to be identified, then effigies of the Queen herself and her illustrious lord were recognised upon the plates. The scandal of these allusions aroused an outburst of indignation, instigated, in great measure, by the caricatured and crucified clergy. The office of the Inquisition was moved to take action, and Goya’s popularity and influence were powerless to avert the inevitable catastrophe. Rescue came from the most unexpected quarter. In 1803 the King caused an edition of 240 copies of 80 plates, which had already been printed, as well as the plates themselves, to be acquired by the state, with an order that he had commanded their publication.

It is difficult to account for this splendid action from such a King as Charles IV. Was he so impressed by the merits of these etchings that he was prompted to rescue them from the Inquisition in the interests of art—a magnanimity of spirit ‘of which his character gives no promise’? Probably he was merely insensible to the satire of the pictures. The ‘Caprichos’ were dedicated to the monarch by the artist—a subtle jest on the stupidity of the King, who, Muther concludes, ‘was not even in a position to grasp the meaning of the plates.’ We learn that Charles remunerated Goya by granting his son a pension of 12,000 reals. A reproduction of the letter from the painter referring to this arrangement is as follows:—