Note.—A recent visit to Spain shows me to be quite mistaken in this matter. A very fine book has lately been published in Barcelona by a Seville artist, F. Garcia y Ramos, "La Tierra di Maria Santissima," and though Señor Garcia y Ramos is greatly indebted to Fortuny, Rico and Vierge, he has made a very notable series of designs; he has also contributed several drawings to a comparatively new Spanish paper,—"Blanco y Negro"—which has printed very good work by a group of young men in Madrid, the most distinguished of whom is Señor Huertas. Another artist on the staff is Jiminez Lucena; he is realistically decorative. The most popular man in Spain, after the artists of "La Lidia" (the organ of the Bull Ring), is Angel Pons, who, however, is but an echo of Caran d'Ache. "La Lidia" is illustrated entirely by lithography and in colour; the designs, often full of go and life, are the work of D. Perea. I find, too, that the French work of 1830 was seen and known in Spain, that some books were produced in the style of "Paul and Virginia," with drawings by Spaniards, though I imagine they were all engraved either in Paris, or by French engravers who went to Spain. The work, however, is but a reminiscence of the French, and simply curious as showing the power of the Romanticists, but more especially of Meissonier as an illustrator. The most interesting of these books is "Spanish Scenes," illustrated by Lameyer, engraved by G. Fernandez, rather in the manner of Gavarni. But there is one Spaniard who as an illustrator is unknown, at least to artists—for he only produced one set of designs for publication—but who is universally known in almost every other branch of art, F. Goya. The only widely published and generally circulated publications, the bank-notes of Spain, are the work of this artist, and they reflect little credit on him. His etchings are to be found in all great galleries; but, interesting as they are, they give no idea of the amazing drawings in chalk, wash, and ink, in which mediums they were produced. Even in Madrid the originals are but little known; the greater number are in the Library of the Prado, the National Museum, inaccessible to the ordinary visitor: but a small selection, undescribed, and not even in the catalogue, are placed upon a revolving screen in the Room of Drawings; but as this is almost always closed, most people leave Madrid without even being aware of the existence of the greatest treasures possessed by the museum after the Velasquez. On this screen are the designs for the bull-fights, admirably described by T. Gautier, in his "Voyage en Espagne," from the literary artist's point of view, but from the artistic stand-point, they are quite the most uninteresting of all, and do not in the slightest express the great passion Goya is said to have always shown for the noblest sport in the world.
It is rather to the exquisite designs in red chalk for the "Scenes of Invasion," that one sees him at his best. Here he is the direct descendant of Callot, only there is a power in his work that Callot never possessed. It is, I am now certain, from these designs that Vierge obtained many of his ideas—although they are worked out in an entirely different fashion. The drawings for the "Caprices" are in pen and wash, and are as much finer than the aquatints made from them, as the aquatints are superior to the caricatures of any of his contemporaries. As Goya passed, an exile, the latter part of his life in France, his work must have been known to the men of 1830. He died in 1828, just as the few lithographs he has left show that he was aware of the work of Delacroix in that newly invented art.
Still, Goya cannot be called an illustrator, for none of his work was published as illustration; yet, at the same time, it is so well adapted to that end that it is perfectly incomprehensible that these drawings have not only never been published, but I am informed they have never even been photographed. The two that are in this book are from the "Caprices," those of the "Invasion" are too delicate to stand the necessary reduction. The portrait of Wellington in red chalk is in the British Museum.
BY W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A. PEN DRAWING FROM “THE MAGAZINE OF ART.”
BY J. W. NORTH. FROM A DRAWING ON THE WOOD IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.