Goya

by François Crastre

HIS YOUTH

Francisco José Goya was born at Fuendetodos, in the province of Aragon, on the 13th of March, 1746. His father, José Goya, and his mother, Gracia Lucientes, were humble peasants and lived upon the product of the sluggish fields that surrounded their modest home. What the childhood of José was, we do not know, for his biographers are silent upon this point. They content themselves with saying that he aided his parents in the daily round of tasks upon the farm. As to his education, it was certainly that of all the young peasant boys of the Spanish farming districts. The child must have acquired the first rudiments from the village priest, or perhaps from the monks of the nearest convent. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic made up the whole equipment that young José possessed at the age of fifteen. How his taste for drawing was first born, what occurrence or what object awakened his artistic instinct, we do not know. Perhaps, like so many others, he became suddenly conscious of his vocation at the sight of some of those cruel and violent pictures representing scenes of the Passion, such as abound in Spanish churches, and it is not unlikely that his youthful soul received a profound and lasting impression.

PLATE III.—THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN
(Museum of the Louvre)

The Louvre is not rich in works by Goya; it possesses only four. But the portrait of a woman, which is here reproduced, belongs to the period of the painter’s second manner, in which a most precise realism went hand in hand with a vaporous lightness and a pervading grayness of tone that recalls the most delicate creations of Prudhon. But the execution is vigorous, and in the expression of the face and in the employment of the colours there are a sureness and an intensity that are remarkable.

However this may be, at the age of fifteen Goya could handle his pencil with sufficient assurance to astonish the worthy monk of Saragossa, who was a judge of such matters. The latter conducted his young protégé to the city, and a few days later entered him as a pupil in the studio of Don José Lujan Martinez.

This Lujan was a Saragossan by birth, but he had studied painting in Naples under the guidance of Mastréolo. Possessing considerable talent, he enjoyed a great reputation in his native city. Upon his return from Italy, he had founded a free school of design, a sort of academy which was maintained wholly by his own contributions, both of money and of time.

Among the artists who were trained in this studio, there were some who left names highly esteemed in Spain: Beraton, Vallespin, Antonio Martinez the goldsmith, and Francisco Bayeu de Subias. With the last named of this group Goya formed a particular attachment, notwithstanding that Bayeu was twelve years the elder.

Goya remained in Lujan’s studio for between four and five years. His fiery and impulsive temperament had already begun to declare itself, and his master did not always succeed in moderating his exuberance. He manifested an extraordinary diligence in his work, he was enamoured of his art, and showed exceptional aptitude for it. From the first months he became the most interesting feature in the studio; his imagination, his enthusiasm, his assurance often surprised his master and stupefied his comrades, who were accustomed to a calmer and less violent manner of painting. At this epoch his character was already beginning to form; one could foresee in him the man that he was destined to be throughout his life. He was no less ardent in his pleasures than in his work. He was the true type of the hot-headed Aragonais, and at the age of nineteen revealed himself, headstrong, turbulent, a born fighter. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the battles that occurred so frequently at that time throughout Aragon between the young men of the different parishes. Uniting in rival gangs, fiercely jealous of one another, they were always ready on holiday evenings to settle some question of superiority, and any excuse for an encounter was welcomed by them. More than once, for the greater honour of San Luis or of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the club and knife scattered blood over the streets and suburbs of Saragossa.

Goya took part in all these battles, flung himself into them, body and soul, tumultuously aiding and abetting this hazardous and adventurous mode of life, which had the flavour of romantic fiction. In the course of one of these collisions, three young men belonging to the rival faction were left stiff and stark on the battle-ground. Goya, who was one of those most directly implicated in the affair, was warned that the Inquisition intended to arrest him. Although it no longer possessed the terrible power of earlier times, the Inquisition was even then by no means light-handed, and there was still serious danger in bringing oneself under its notice. Goya was well aware of this, and he did not wait for the arrival of the alguazils. That same night he left the city and wended his way to Madrid, which, as it happened, it had long been his dream to visit.