The melancholy which had settled upon Goya after the accession of the intrusive King increased with advancing age. In the seclusion of his house (the house in which he had entertained the noblest of the Court circle—the Deaf Man’s House, as it came to be called by the Madrileños) he beguiled the time by painting the walls with fantastic and gruesome visions which gave it an awesome and startling appearance. But the brilliant fancy had been obscured by the national vicissitudes he had witnessed and the haunting memories of the war obsessed his imagination. These paintings, which are now preserved in the Prado, produce a painful impression; they would seem to be the creations of a fevered brain.
In 1817 Goya visited Seville to paint the picture of Santas Justa and Rufina for the Cathedral, to which reference has been made. On his return he designed a new series of Caprices, and executed many portraits and miniatures on ivory. It was at this time, too, that he made his first essay in lithography. The earliest of these lithographs is a fine brush drawing of an old woman spinning. It is signed and dated February 1819. Among the drawings upon stone that were executed about this period, the two most important are ‘Los Chiens,’ a bull attacked by dogs, and the splendid diabolical scene of a man being dragged along by demons. This last, which is in the Print Room of the British Museum, has special interest, as it is the first known wash drawing made upon the stone. M. Lefort mentions six other lithographs which were executed at Madrid before the journey to France: a duel between two people, a young woman reading to two children, a monk, a girl sitting on the knee of an old woman with other women in the background, a drunkard and a woman, and a peasant assaulting a girl.
The date of the execution of ‘Los Proverbios,’ the fourth series of Goya’s etchings,—‘the last thunderbolt of his genius,’—is uncertain. Probably they belong to those years when, under the weight of distress of spirits in his lonely home on the Manzanares, he sketched the world within him as it appeared to his gloomy imagination. The plates are without explanatory titles, and their meaning is obscure. Mr. Rothenstein finds in the larger size and broader execution of the plates themselves the reason for his belief that these are the last etchings by Goya’s hand before his failing eyesight forced him to lay aside the needle. The plates were first printed in 1830. This edition was edited with little care, and in 1864 a second edition was undertaken by the Academy of San Fernando. There were eighteen of these plates, but three more, reproduced much later in L’Art, may be placed among them.
There remain several important etchings; among them the three fine and impressive plates of ‘The Prisoners’ come first in importance. In these, as Mr. Rothenstein has said, ‘Goya’s powers as an etcher and his sympathy for suffering are demonstrated in a striking and singularly direct manner.’ Beneath the prints he has written in three sentences, his last protest against injustice: ‘The safe guarding of a prisoner does not necessitate torture’; ‘If he is guilty, why not kill him at once?’ ‘So much barbarity in the treatment equals the crime committed.’ The first proofs of these prints Goya gave to his friend, Cean Bermudez. The plates known as Obras Sueltas were not, as far as we know, printed in Goya’s lifetime. They show a man swinging a woman on a swing, with a cat watching her from the bough of a tree; a bull-fighter with a bull lying down behind him; and two representations of majas. They were first etched at Bordeaux, and from the somewhat crude style of the work, probably were the last prints executed by Goya.
Among several unconnected prints we may mention the superb engraving of ‘The Colossus,’ which seems like an etching at first glance and has defied the attempts of experts to explain the highly complicated process of its execution. As an illustration of Goya’s resources for producing a marvellous impression, this piece constitutes a veritable tour de force. The giant is placed in a vast landscape, and beside his uncouth might and Herculean muscles, cities and villages seem diminutive and insignificant atoms of the soil on which he rests. He is frightened into wakefulness by the morning sun which touches his mighty head and shoulders; they seem as if the summit of a mountain, while his feet are yet in the shadow of night. A mysterious, pale, fantastic effect of moonlight throws a peculiar atmosphere about the figure. As we have already remarked, the process by which the effect is obtained remains inexplicable. According to a statement made by Goya’s grandson, the engraver employed a very soft metal plate from which only three impressions could be taken. One of these impressions is in the National Library of Madrid. A brilliant and rare old engraving of ‘A Blind Guitar Player,’ a large but inferior plate of a popular scene, and three etchings of religious subjects, complete the list of Goya’s miscellaneous etchings.
In June 1824, at the age of seventy-six, Goya set out for France. Before starting he painted his ‘San José de Calasanz receiving the Sacrament’—perhaps his finest religious composition. The work was scarcely dry when he sought and obtained the King’s permission to take the mineral waters at Plombières in France. The remainder of his life’s story is soon told. In Paris he made the personal acquaintance of Vernet, and found delight in the works of Gros, of Géricault, and of Delacroix. The last master did honour to Goya by copying every plate of the ‘Caprichos.’ But the full life of Paris was too overwhelming for the old painter, and having obtained in January 1825 a six months’ extension of leave from the King, he settled down in Bordeaux with his devoted friends, Mme. Weiss and her daughter. In the little Spanish colony on the pleasant banks of the Garonne, he had for companions Joseph de Carnerero, the marine painter, Antonio de Brugada, the members of the family of Goicoechea, and Pio de Molina, and Moratin, whose portraits he painted. But these pictures do not represent his full powers; the colours are heavy and sometimes crude; he worked with double magnifying glasses and a stout lens. But in his engraving, and especially in his series of lithographs, ‘Les Taureaux de Bordeaux,’ which Mr. Rothenstein describes as ‘the most remarkable compositions of his life, certainly the greatest and most significant lithographs in the history of the art,’ his old powers shine forth again in undimmed brilliance.
In 1826 the feeling of home-sickness drew him back to Madrid. At Court he was received with every mark of respect. The King granted him a superannuation salary of 50,000 reals and permission to return to France, ‘in order that he may again take the baths which have done him so much good.’ His Majesty requested him to sit to Vicente López y Portaña, in order that he might possess a picture of ‘the greatest painter Spain has seen since Velazquez.’ López painted ‘the good old Goya’ life-size, seated full-face, palette in the left hand, brush in the right, and wearing an unbuttoned frockcoat. The portrait was executed in a few hours, for at the second sitting Goya carried away the portrait, assuring the painter that he would only spoil the likeness if he persevered any further with ‘his niggling brush.’ It is said that he took palette and brush and essayed a portrait of López, but his hand, cold and trembling, refused to respond to the call made upon it, and the attempt was a failure.
The royal pension and permission to return to France is dated July 17, 1826. Accompanied by his grandson, Mariano, he betook himself again to Bordeaux. His declining years were cheered by the affectionate attentions of his young compatriot, Antonio de Brugada, who attended him in his infrequent strolls, suffered patiently his querulous moods, and even played to him on the piano the national airs which the old man could not hear. In one last flash of his genius Goya painted an admirable portrait of Juan Maguiro. It was his last work, and beneath the signature he inscribed his age—eighty-one years.
In March 1828 a premonition that his end was near filled Goya with a strong desire to see his son once more before he died. When he heard that his wish was to be realised he wrote to his son: ‘Dear Xavier,—I can only tell you that this great pleasure has somewhat indisposed me and I am in bed. God grant that I can see you when you come, and then I shall be quite satisfied. Good-bye.—Your father, Francisco.’ Xavier reached Bordeaux on March 13. Three days later Goya had a paralytic seizure, and surrounded by his family and his intimate friends, ‘the greatest painter that Spain has seen since Velazquez,’ breathed his last.
On the following day the remains of Goya were buried in the Goicoechea family vault in the Grand Chartreux Cemetery of Bordeaux, and the following inscription was engraved on the stone:—