| THE FATES | GOYA |
| THE PRADO | |
back and his legs screwed up to maintain a precarious balance, sits Man. Meanwhile, the crone on the left, a harridan of the slums, clenches in her fist a pigmy figure, whose hands are stretched in vain supplication to a darkened sky. Such is the beginning of Man’s destiny; to discover the development of which another crone is peering through a spy-glass. The third Fate, nude, younger and of opulent form, turns her face to a lurid glare in the sky. Watching till the light fades, she holds the scissors which will cut the thread and precipitate Man, sated with passion, into the waters below.
This colossal travesty of life, as nothing but inchoate, chaotic, brute nature, swayed by elemental lust, is painted with such amazing brutality, that the pigments seem as if they might have been laid on with a trowel. The crudity is intentional, producing a texture that fits the monstrous irony of the conception. Moreover, before this picture one loses sense of color, as consisting of specific hues. It is, in fact, an apt illustration of Goya’s own paradox, that color does not exist, that everything is light and shade of varying values. While one may discover the application of this principle in the meagre range of color, manipulated with nuances of value, which distinguishes all the canvases of Goya’s maturity, it is particularly evident in his subjects of grotesque and violent imagination such as The Fates. Another example, selected for reproduction here (p. 189), is The Scene of May 3, 1808. The citizens captured by Murat’s troops, in the riot of the previous night, are being shot down in batches; the incident taking place in the grounds of the palace of the “Prince of Peace”! The dull drab grey of early morning hangs over the scene and seems to have impregnated the uniforms of the soldiers and the clothes of their scared, hopeless victims. But the dead monotony is rent with a shriek, shrilling out in the clear, cold notes of the white shirt of the poor wretch whose arms are raised, in the yellow breeches and the crimson pool of blood. It is a remarkable example of color used solely for the purpose of expression; a use most characteristic of Goya, to which we will return later.
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In the troubles which overtook Spain, Goya proved himself neither patriot nor hero. He swore allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte and utilised the sufferings of his country for a series of etchings, The Disasters of War, in which the horrors of the military invasion are depicted with unexampled force and naturalism. After Wellington had expelled the French, Goya again played the part of opportunist and pledged his fealty to Ferdinand VII. The King, remarking that Goya’s conduct deserved hanging but that he was a great artist and should be forgiven, restored him to his position of Court Painter. Goya, however, was beginning to decline. His deafness had grown upon him and with it a moroseness and irritability of temper, which made him shun society and bury himself in his country house. His deafness even denied him the solace of his favorite amusement, playing on the piano. His wife was dead, and the sole object of the old man’s affection was his little grandson, Mariano, whose face he has commemorated in the portrait, now owned in Madrid by the Marqués de Alcañices.
Goya at length obtained the King’s permission to visit France. He spent some time in Paris, where he was welcomed by Delacroix and the younger spirits of the French romantic movement. He then settled in Bordeaux, tended and cared for by an old friend, Madame Weiss. During this period he executed a few portraits and the lithographs, Les Taureaux de Bordeaux, in which his old time vigor is displayed. When the term of his leave of absence had expired, he revisited Madrid and was received by the King and people with marks of the highest respect and consideration. Goya was now in his eighty-second year, and returned to Bordeaux, where he lingered a few months and died in the Spring of 1828. Seventy-one years later his remains were removed from the cemetery of Bordeaux and interred with honors in Madrid. For by this time Goya’s reputation had become world-wide, and his influence upon modern art thoroughly recognised.
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