Such was the condition of Spanish painting when, without precedent, reason or motive, appeared in the province of Aragon, a region which years afterwards came to typify the resistance to foreign invasion, a figure of great significance in Spanish art, and worthy of comparison with the greatest masters of the preceding centuries—Francisco de Goya.
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The long life of Goya coincides with an epoch which divides two ages. The critic is somewhat at a loss how to place his work and personality, to conclude whether he is the last of the old masters or the first of the moderns. His greatness is so obvious, his performance so vast and its gradual evolution so manifest, that we may be justified in holding that the first portion of his effort belongs to the old order of things, while the second must be associated with the origins of modern painting. In his advance, in the manner and development of it, it is noticeable—as we have already said in certain of our works which deal with Goya—that he substituted for the picturesque, agreeable and suggestive note of his younger days, another more intense and more embracive. It would seem that the French invasion of the Peninsula, the horrors of which he experienced and depicted, influenced him profoundly in the alteration of his style. There is a Goya of the eighteenth century and a Goya of the nineteenth. But this is not entirely due to variation in technique, to mere artistic development, it is more justly to be traced to a change in creative outlook, in character, in view-point, which underwent a rude and violent transformation. Compare the subjects of his tapestries or of his festive canvases, joyful and gallant, facile in conception and at times almost trivial, with the tragic and macabre scenes of his old age, and with the drawings of this period and the compositions known as “The Disasters of War.”
His spirit was fortified and nourished by the warmth of his imagination, and assisted by an adequate technique, marvellously suited to the expression of his ideas, he produced the colossal art of his later years. If his performance is studied with reference to the vicissitudes and the adventures of which it is eloquent, the influence upon his works of the times in which they were created is obvious. The changes in his life, the transference from those gay and tranquil years to others full of the horrors of blood and fire, of shame and banishment, tended, without doubt, to discipline his spirit and excite his intelligence. His natural bias to the fantastic and his tendency to adapt the world to his visions seized upon the propitious occasion in a time of invasion and war to exalt itself, or, as he himself expressed it, “the dream of reason produces prodigies.”
An artist and creator more as regards expression than form, especially in the second phase of his work, unequal in achievement and at times inaccurate, he sacrificed much to divest himself of these faults. He deliberately set himself to discipline his ideas and develop that degree of boldness with which he longed to infuse them. But he was not quite able to subject himself to reality, and, as he was forgetful and indolent, that which naturally dominated him began to show itself in quite other productions of consummate mastery. This art, imaginative in expression and idea, is more striking as regards its individual and original qualities, than for any degree of discipline which it shows.
To follow Goya throughout the vicissitudes of his long life is not a matter of difficulty. The man to whom modern Spanish art owes its being was born in the little village of Fuendetodos and lived whilst a child at Saragossa. He came to Madrid at an early age, and before his thirtieth year went to Rome with the object of perfecting himself in his art. But he failed to obtain much direction at the academies in Parma, and having but little enthusiasm for the Italian masters of that time, returned to Spain, settling at Madrid. Until this time the artist had not evinced any exceptional gifts. Goya was not precocious. The first works to assist his reputation were a series of cartoons for tapestries to be woven at the Royal Factory. They were destined for the walls of the royal palaces of Aranjuez, the Escurial and the Prado, which Carlos IV desired to renovate according to the fashion of the time. These works, which brought fame to Goya, showed two distinctive qualities. One of them evinces the originality of his subjects, in which appear gallants, blacksmiths, beggars, labourers, popular types in short, who for the first time appeared in the decoration of Spanish palaces and castles, which, until then, had known only religious paintings, military scenes, the portraits of the Royal Family and stately hidalgos. Goya, in this sense, democratized art. The other note to be observed in his work is a certain distinction of craftsmanship, the alertness which it reveals, which is, perhaps, due to the lightness of his colouring. On canvases prepared with tones of a light red hue, which he retained as the basis of his picture, he sketched his figures and backgrounds with light brushes and velatures, retaining, where possible, the tone of the ground. This light touch, rendered necessary by the extensive character of the design and the rapidity with which it had to be executed, gave to the artist a freedom and quickness in all he drew, and from it his later works, much more important than these early essays though they were, profited not a little.
Already during these earlier years he had commenced to paint portraits which did much to enhance his reputation, and shortly afterwards he entered the royal service as first painter to the Court, where he addressed himself to the execution of that vast collection of works of all kinds which arouse such interest to-day. The list is interminable and embraces the portraits of Carlos IV and of the Queen Maria Louisa, those of the members of the Royal Family, of all the aristocracy, of the Albas, Osunas, Benaventes, Montellanos, Pignatellis, Fernán-Núñezs, the greatest wits and intellectuals of the day, especially those of Jovellanos, Moratin, and Meléndez Valdés, three men who profoundly influenced the thought of Goya in a progressive and almost revolutionary manner, in spite of his connection with the Court and the aristocracy. He also painted many portraits of popular persons, both men and women, among whom may be mentioned La Tirana, the bookseller of the Calle de Carretas, and that most mysterious and adventurous of femmes galantes of whom, now clothed, now nude, the artist has bequeathed to us those souvenirs which hang on the walls of the Prado Museum. In these the artist has for all time fixed and immortalized the finest physical type of Spanish womanhood, in which an occasional lack of perfect proportion is compensated for by elegance, grace, and unexaggerated curve and figure, without doubt one of the most exquisite feminine types which has been produced by any race. Besides these, the artist produced many lesser canvases containing tiny figures full of wonderful grace and gallantry, and having rural backgrounds, frequently of the banks of the Manzanares, and others of larger proportions and scope, among the most excellent of which is that of the family of Carlos IV, treasured in the Prado Museum as one of its most precious jewels. Along with The Burial of the Count of Orgaz ([Plate V.]) and Las Meninas ([Plate X.]), this picture may be regarded as the most complete and astonishing which Spanish art has given us. It is not a “picture” in the ordinary sense of the word, but an absolute solution of the problem of how colour harmonies are to be attained, and a most striking essay in impressionism, in which an infinity of bold and varied shades and colours blend in a magnificent symphony.
Goya, triumphant and rejoicing in a life ample and satisfying, received on all sides the flatteries of the great, and, caressed by reigning beauties, lived in the tranquil pursuit of his art, which, though intense, was yet graceful and gallant, and, as we have said, still adhered to the manner of the eighteenth century, when a profound shock agitated the national life—the war with Napoleon and the French invasion. The first painter to the Court of Carlos IV, a fugitive, deaf, and already old, life, as he then experienced it, might have seemed to him a happy dream with a terrible awakening. His possessions, his pictures, and his models were dispersed and maltreated; the Court seemed to have finished its career, for his royal master was banished by force, many of the nobility were condemned to death, and Countesses, Duchesses and Maids of Honour vanished like the easy and enjoyable existence he had known. Above all, Saragossa, that heroic city, beleaguered on every side, was closed to him; a depleted army defended the strategical points of the Peninsula, and the people—the people whom Goya loved and who had so often served him as models for his damsels, his bull-fighters, his wenches, his little children—were wandering over the length and breadth of Spain, only to be shot as guerillas and stone-throwers by the soldiers of Napoleon. It was at this moment that the true development of the artist began. The painter, like his race, was not to be conquered. The old Goya remained, strong in the creation of a lofty art. The last twenty years of his life were full indeed, and represented its most vigorous phase, the most energetic in the whole course of his achievement. Scenes of war and disaster occupied almost the whole of this important period, full of a profound pessimism, which still does not lack a certain graceful style, and displays unceasingly some of the saddest thoughts which man has ever known. These works of Goya are not of any party, are not political nor sectarian. They are simply human. For his greatness is all-embracive and his might enduring. Typical of his work in this last respect are The Fusiliers, of 1808, and his lesser efforts, those scenes of brigandage, madness, plague and famine which occur so frequently in his paintings during the years which followed the war.
We do not mean to make any hard and fast assertion that Goya would not have developed in intensity of feeling if he had not personally experienced and suffered the horrors of the invasion, but merely to indicate that it was this which brought about the revulsion within him and powerfully exalted him. His last years in Madrid, and afterwards in Bordeaux, where he died, were always characterized by the note of pessimism, and at times, of horror, as is shown in the paintings which once decorated his house and are now preserved in the Prado Museum. Not a few portraits of these years also show that the artist gained in intensity and in individual style. It is precisely these works, so advanced for their time and so progressive, that provided inspiration to painters like Manet, who achieved such progress in the nineteenth century, and who were enamoured of the visions of Goya, of his technique and his methods, naturalistic, perhaps, but always replete with observation and individual expression.
We must not forget to mention that Goya produced a decorative masterpiece of extraordinary distinction and supreme originality—the mural painting of the Chapel of St. Antonio of Florida, in Madrid. Nor is it less fitting to record his fecundity in the art of etching, in which, as in his painting, it is easy to observe the development of their author from a style gallant and spirited to an interpretation of deep intensity, such as is to be witnessed in the collection of “The Caprices” and “The Follies,” if these are compared with the so-called “Proverbs” and especially with “The Disasters of War.”