Goya, an account of his life and works

by Albert Frederick Calvert

I only desire your excellency’s orders and that you keep well. May God preserve your excellency’s valuable life for many years.—Madrid, October 9, 1803.—Your excellency’s obedient and grateful servant,

Francisco de Goya.

To his Excellency Señor Don Miguel Cayetano Soler.

The technical excellence of the Caprichos makes them comparable with those of Rembrandt, while in their meaning and character they may be likened to the work of Daumier. There are the peculiar qualities of Goya’s etching, which recall the truth and naturalness of Fernando Boll, the movement and life of Lievens and Konninck, and the expression and charm of Von Vliet? These artists, whose best individual qualities are all combined in Goya, were pupils of Rembrandt. ‘Only Hokusai,’ writes Mr. Rothenstein, ‘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 “Caprichos” and “The Disasters,” has probably prevented his etchings gaining a footing in England.’ Certain it is that Goya’s prints are rarely to be met with in this country—a fact that caused the writer of this book to spare no effort in order to include in the illustrations, reproductions of every etching and lithograph, as well as of every portrait or picture of Goya’s, of which he could secure an impression.

It is one thing to admire, even to understand, the technique of the ‘Caprichos,’ but to understand the precise significance of many of the plates is almost impossible. Perhaps the titles printed by Goya beneath the plates are the best guide to their meaning. The only reward to be derived from reading ingenious meanings into the prints is the personal interest one finds in the exercise. The series may be divided into three classes; the first are humorous satires of the foolishness and rottenness of the life of the period; the second are scathing assaults upon the ignorance and greed of the priesthood and the corruptness of the civic institutions; and the last are visions of witches and demons, which may be classed as pure phantasies. There is a depth of meaning in every plate, for Goya reproduces for us in them not only what he has seen, but what he has felt. The first plate illustrates a marriage of convenience, and we are shown the girl-bride being presented to her hideous suitor by her more hideous mother. Over and over again we are presented with this type of the ‘complaisant mother,’ which has been described by Théophile Gautier in illuminating prose. ‘It is impossible’ he writes, ‘to fancy anything more grotesquely horrible, more viciously deformed. Each of these frightful old shrews unites in her own person the ugliness of the seven capital sins; compared to them the Prince of Darkness himself is pretty. Just fancy whole ditches and counterscarps of wrinkles; eyes like live coals that have been extinguished in blood; noses like the neck of an alembic covered with warts and other excrescences; nostrils like those of an hippopotamus rendered formidable by stiff bristles; whiskers like a tiger’s; a mouth like the slit in the top of a money-box, contracted by a horrible and convulsive grin; a something between the spider and the multiped which makes you feel the same kind of disgust as if you had placed your foot upon the belly of a toad.’ The description is horrible even as Goya’s engravings are horrible, and as excellently true as the work by which it was inspired.

It is not possible in the space at our command to review these ‘Caprichos’ in detail, and fortunately it is not necessary. The reader can examine the plates for himself and study their details. He will remark the skill with which the engraver endows ‘The Garroted Man’ with its sombre, gruesome tone; the sense of the unavailing, despairing effort with which the living skeleton in ‘And yet they do not go’ (Plate 369) supports the slab of stone which must inevitably fall and crush the crouching, scarcely human wretches who anticipate their fate with expressions of such lurid horror. One can feel the violence of the wind that buffets the women in ‘A Bad Night’; we enter into the terror of the woman who is employed in her hideous task in ‘Tooth Hunting.’ Here indeed, ‘horror confronts us; corruptness is imagined with an unapproachable depth of grotesqueness.’ In all the realm of art there is nothing to compare with the horror and grotesquerie of these Caprices.

Goya’s next work was the thirty-three plates of ‘The Tauromachia.’ This series of engravings was so brilliant in execution and appealed so strongly in their theme and treatment to the Spanish national affection for the bull-ring, that doubtless they would have brought the etcher even greater contemporary fame than the larger series, but for some unexplained reason, they were not publicly issued until after his death and the death of his only surviving legitimate son. In the ‘Tauromachia’ Goya made less use of aquatint and aquafortis, and, as in his later etchings, relied more and more upon the needle to produce his effects. These scenes of the bull-ring represent the different phases of the combat and the surpassing feats of its most famous exponents. The ‘Caprices’ may appeal more strongly in some respects, but the drawing in the plates of the ‘Tauromachia’ is extremely light and facile, and the illusion of vigorous movement is seen in them all.

In 1803 Goya was fifty-seven years old. The corruption in high places, against which he had hurled his darts, was fast driving Spain into the grasp of the world-power which was menacing all Europe. Napoleon’s ambitious designs embraced the mastership of the Peninsula, and he was already maturing his plans to that end. In 1803 the English and French were again at war. Napoleon demanded, under the treaty of St. Ildefonso, that Spain should declare war against England. Godoy strove fiercely to resist the will of the tyrant. Napoleon ordered the dismissal of Godoy. Spain purchased her neutrality in hard cash, and Godoy was retained. In 1804 Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor, and the neutrality of the Spaniards was reduced to such a farce beneath the grinding importunities of the imperial ally that Pitt declared war against Spain in December of that year. The battle of Trafalgar was fought on October 21, 1805, but before the end of the year Napoleon had entered Vienna and won the battle of Austerlitz. Before the awful menace of his growing power, Godoy sued for the favour of the conqueror in gold drawn from the Spanish funds. The Emperor accepted the money without relaxing his animus against the despised favourite, who was forced to approach England with proposals for an anti-French coalition. His overtures were ignored. The Queen and the King heaped new honours upon the Prince of the Peace, but his end and that of his august patrons was near. Ferdinand’s party was working the country into a ferment of hatred against Godoy, and Napoleon’s inflexible aversion sealed his doom. In 1807 Ferdinand truckled to the ‘Scourge of Europe’ by asking for a lady of Napoleon’s family for a wife, while Godoy urged upon Napoleon the occupation of Portugal as a preliminary to the introduction of French troops into Spain. In October 1807 Portugal proving refractory, Junot and a strong force encamped on Spanish soil and were made welcome by the Prince of the Asturias and the Prince of the Peace, both of whom regarded the invasion of the French as a friendly move, in support of their respective interests.

In the same month the Court was stricken by the exposure of the plot and counterplot planned by the rascally favourite and the intriguing Crown Prince. Godoy was charged by Ferdinand with the intention of killing the King and his family and seizing the throne; Ferdinand was surprised in a plot which embraced the imprisonment if not the death of his father. The Prince of the Asturias was placed under arrest, and the King applied to Napoleon for his advice. Junot marched into Portugal; French troops poured into Spain; the Portuguese Regent, at the advice of Lord Strangford, transferred his court to Brazil. On March 17, 1808, the troops, in favour of Ferdinand, prevented Godoy from leaving Aranguez, and two days later threw him, bruised and bleeding, at the feet of the Prince of the Asturias, who gave his father to understand that, by virtue of the presence in the capital of his friends the French, he was absolute master of the situation. Charles IV. signed a decree which made Ferdinand VII. sovereign of Spain. A few days later he put his name to a private withdrawal of his abdication; and this document was forwarded to Napoleon, with a letter offering to conform to whatever the Emperor might order with regard to him, his queen, and the Prince of the Peace. Napoleon came south towards Spain. Ferdinand, who hastened north to meet him, entered Bayonne to find himself a prisoner. Charles IV., with Maria Luisa and Godoy, followed to Bayonne, and Ferdinand was compelled to restore the crown to his father, who transferred it to Napoleon. The cash consideration the King was to receive for his sovereignty was never paid.

While these base traffickings were occupying the King and his family, the gallant loyalists of Madrid had risen against the French and suffered massacre on the terrible Dos de Mayo. Once again the country was in arms; the Spaniards fought—to instance only the sieges of Zaragoza and Valencia—with superb valour, but the Junta continued its servile negotiations with Napoleon, and Joseph Buonaparte, King of Naples, was summoned by his brother to rule over Spain. On July 9, 1808, Joseph I. set foot in his new kingdom. On the 17th the French were defeated in the battle of Baileu, and the victorious Spanish troops advanced over the Sierra Morena to Madrid. The new king fled the capital. Napoleon in person took command of the army which was to reconquer Spain, and advanced into the heart of Castile. The left division of the Spanish army was defeated on November 11, the right was driven into the mountains of Aragon, the centre was completely crushed at Tudela on November 26. A fortnight later the Emperor entered Madrid, and Joseph I. was restored to the throne of Spain.