Henceforth, throughout a period of more than fifty years, he was destined to produce unweariedly, trying his hand at the most diverse types, alternating between painting and engraving; and in his life-work, which, taken as a whole, is one of the vastest and most varied that ever came from any artist, he has given us the measure of his prodigious fecundity.
He made his debut in genre painting, and he drew his inspiration straight from the life of the people. Spain, for that matter, furnished an exceptional nutriment for his order of talent; land that it was of vivid light, ardent colour, picturesque manners and curious costumes, it was well designed to fire that vigorous and impulsive nature to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. And hence, while Madrid looked on and marvelled, there came in swift succession from his brush a whole series of pictures saturated with local colour: bull fights, attacks of bandits, clandestine meetings, processions, masquerades, all the life of the Spanish city and the Spanish highway, reproduced in piquant, accurate, brightly coloured scenes, of charming naïveté and exquisite naturalness, replete with vivacity and riotous fancy.
On closer inspection it would be easy to find a certain amount of incorrectness in the drawing. Some of his bulls, especially, are endowed with anatomical proportions that at best only approximate the truth. But they have such spirit, such vigour, such nimbleness, such furious agility, that we feel ourselves snatched up and borne along by this living whirlwind, this intensity of movement, almost as though we were bodily present in the arena where the blood-stained drama is in the course of enactment. As to the colouring, it is very light and very luminous and silvery.
Almost at the same period Goya published a collection of etchings in which he had reproduced the most celebrated masterpieces of Velazquez. It was a daring venture, but it had no terrors for the young artist. Goya did no injustice to Velazquez; he succeeded most felicitously in reproducing in these etchings not only the design, but the colour values and characteristic spirit of his model. This magnificent series, executed during the year 1778, comprises sixteen pieces, which to-day are of inestimable value.
That same year the Franciscans went to great expense to decorate their church; they appealed to the most renowned artists which Madrid at that period possessed. Goya was entrusted with the decoration of a chapel which required two paintings. The subjects specified were a Christ on the Cross and a St. Francis Preaching. The Christ on the Cross is distinguished by a very fine religious spirit, enhanced by its admirable drawing and by a dignity quite its own. The fine and delicate modelling suggests comparison with the most perfect works of Italy; and the whole painting is overspread with an infinitely light surface coat of colour, very luminous and very pale.
This canvas is the best of all Goya’s religious works. On the contrary, his St. Francis Preaching in no way deserved the vogue which it enjoyed at the time, both at Court and in the city circles. Its heavy composition, pretentious and ill balanced, did no credit to any of Goya’s qualities, save that of colourist, in which respect he was always interesting.
Goya was now the idol of the whole population of Madrid, who revelled in his fantasies and regarded him as their national painter. Already celebrated through his scenes of the life of the people, he had now acquired a new prestige through the fame of his religious paintings; and there was good reason for astonishment that he had not yet been rewarded by any official honour. His rival painters had scant love for him, or, to put it more frankly, they hated the powerful originality of his talent so far removed from the slow product of their uninspired toil. In order to belittle him, they censured the incorrectness of his drawing and the violent character of his subjects. But public opinion triumphed over this dead weight of malevolence. However reluctantly, the Academy of Saint-Marc welcomed him among its members on the seventh of May, 1780, hailing him as “academician by merit.”
A few months later the Chapter of Nuestra Señora del Pilar at Saragossa decided to have its sanctuary decorated and instituted a competition among the leading artists of Spain, under the direction of Goya’s brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu. Goya decided to compete, and one of the vaults, with its adjacent panels, was assigned to him. The sketches which he submitted were only half satisfactory, and the Chapter requested him to modify them. Goya took the criticisms in ill part, imputing them, whether rightly or wrongly, to his brother-in-law’s jealousy, and refused in any way to modify his designs. A bitter quarrel might have resulted, if mutual friends had not intervened to reconcile the two artists. Finally, Goya agreed to make certain concessions; the vault was entrusted to him, and he forthwith commenced the execution of his frescoes.
The subject chosen represented The Virgin and the Martyred Saints in their Glory. This immense work required no less than three years of the artist’s time, and he expended upon it all his science and all his exceptional qualities as a colourist. It is an attractive work, cleverly composed, possessing a fine decorative effect, brilliant and warm, and in no way inferior to the most resplendent frescoes of Tiepolo. Only one thing was lacking, the religious spirit, of which Goya was wholly destitute. In works of this order, dexterity is not sufficient; the breath of the inner zeal is necessary; cleverness, dexterity, the gift of colour, cannot make up for the absence of faith. As often as Goya attempted religious painting, the result showed the same general order of deficiencies, because he always treated his subjects solely as a painter, and not, after the manner of Raphael and Correggio, as a devout believer.