His pictures in the Museum at Madrid consist of the portraits of Charles IV. and his Queen on horseback: the heads are admirably painted, and are full of life, delicacy, and intelligence; a Picador, and the "Massacre of the Second of May," a scene from the French Invasion. The Duke d'Ossuna possesses several of Goya's works, and there is hardly a family of consequence that has not some portrait or sketch of his. The interior of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, where there is a fête which is pretty numerously attended, at the distance of half a league from Madrid, is painted in fresco by Goya, with that boldness and effect which characterize him. At Toledo, in one of the capitular rooms, we saw a painting of his, representing Jesus betrayed by Judas. The effect of night is such as Rembrandt would not have disowned; indeed, I should have attributed the picture to him, had not a canon pointed out to me the signature of the famous painter of Charles IV. In the sacristy of the cathedral at Seville there is also a picture of great merit by Goya, representing Saint Justine and Saint Ruffine, virgins and martyrs, who were both daughters of a potter, a circumstance that is indicated by the alcarazas and cantaros grouped at their feet.
Goya's mode of painting was as eccentric as his talent. He kept his colours in tubs, and applied them to the canvass by means of sponges, brooms, rags, and everything that happened to be within his reach. He put on his tones with a trowel, as it were, exactly like so much mortar, and painted touches of sentiment with large daubs of his thumb. From the fact of his working in this offhand and expeditious manner, he would cover some thirty feet of wall in a couple of days. This method certainly appears somewhat to exceed even the licence accorded to the most impetuous and fiery genius; the most dashing painters are but children compared with him. He executed, with a spoon for a brush, a painting of the "Dos de Mayo," where some French troops are shooting a number of Spaniards. It is a work of incredible vigour and fire; but, curious as it is, it is dishonourably banished to the antechamber in the museum at Madrid.
The individuality of this artist is so strong and so determined, that it is difficult to give even the faintest notion of it. Goya is not a caricaturist like Hogarth, Bunbury, or Cruikshank; Hogarth was serious and phlegmatic, as exact and minute as one of Richardson's novels, always impressing some moral lesson on the mind of the spectator; Bunbury and Cruikshank, so remarkable for their sly humour and their comic exaggeration, have nothing in common with the author of the "Caprichos." Callot might at first appear to be more like him, for Callot was half Spaniard, half gipsy; but Callot is distinct, delicate, clear, definite, and true to nature, despite the mannerism of his forms and the extravagant and braggart style of his costume; his most singular devilries are rigorously possible; his etchings are always remarkable for their strong light, for the minute attention to the various details in them is fatal to effect and chiaro-oscuro, which can only be obtained by sacrificing them. The compositions of Goya are enveloped in the deepest gloom of night, traversed merely by an unexpected ray of light, which brings out some pale outlines or strange phantoms.
Goya's works are a mixture of those of Rembrandt, Watteau, and the comical dreams of Rabelais; a strange union! Add to all this, a strong Spanish flavour, a strong dose of the picaresque spirit of Cervantes, when he drew the portraits of the Escalanta and the Gananciosa in Rinconete and Cortadillo, and even then you will only have an imperfect notion of Goya's talent. We will endeavour to explain it more exactly, if, indeed, it is possible to do so by mere words.
Goya's drawings are executed in aquatinta, touched up and picked out with aquafortis; nothing can be more frank, more free, and more easy. A single stroke expresses a whole physiognomy, and a trail of shade serves as a background, or allows the spectator to catch a glimpse of some landscape only half-sketched in, or some pass of a sierra, fit scenes for a murder, a witches' sabbath, or a tertulia of gipsies; but this is rare, for the background cannot be said to exist in Goya's works. Like Michael Angelo, he completely despises external nature, and only takes just sufficient to enable him to group his figures, and very often he composes his background of clouds alone. From time to time, there is a portion of a wall cut off by a large angle of shade, a hedge hardly indicated, and that is all. For the want of a better word, we have said that Goya was a caricaturist. But his caricatures are in the style of Hoffmann, where fancy always goes hand in hand with criticism, and often rises to the gloomy and the terrible. It seems as if all these grinning heads had been drawn by the talons of Smarra, on the wall of some suspicious alcove, lighted by the flickering of an expiring lamp. You feel transported into some unheard-of, impossible, but still real world. The trunks of the trees look like phantoms, the men resemble hyenas, owls, cats, asses, or hippopotamuses; their nails may be talons, their shoes covered with bows may conceal cloven feet; that young cavalier may be some old corpse, and his trunk hose, ornamented with ribbons, envelop perhaps a fleshless thigh-bone and two shrunk legs; never did more mysterious and sinister apparitions issue from behind the stove of Dr. Faustus.
It is said that Goya's caricatures contain certain political allusions, but they are few in number. They are directed against Godoy, the old Duchess de Benavente, the favourites of the queen, and some of the noblemen of the court, whose vices and ignorance they stigmatize. But you must seek their meaning through the folds of the thick veil with which they are covered. Goya executed, also, other drawings for his friend, the Duchess d'Alba; but they have never been made public, doubtless, on account of the ease with which they could be applied to the persons caricatured in them. Some of them ridicule the fanaticism, gluttony, and stupidity of the monks, while others represent subjects of public manners or witchcraft.
The portrait of Goya serves as a frontispiece to the collected edition of his works. He is represented as a man of about fifty, with a quick oblique glance, a large eyelid and a sly, mocking, crow's-foot beneath. The chin is curved upwards, the upper lip is thin, and the lower one prominent and sensual. The face is surrounded by whiskers of a description peculiar to natives of southern climates and the head is covered by a hat à la Bolivar. The whole physiognomy is that of a man of strongly-developed character.
The first plate represents a money match, a poor young girl sacrificed by her avaricious parents, to a cacochymical and horrible old man. The bride looks charming with her little black velvet mask, and her basquina ornamented with deep fringe, for Goya represents Andalusian and Castilian beauty most marvellously; her parents are hideous with rapacity and envious misery, resembling in the most astounding manner sharks and crocodiles. The poor child is laughing through her tears, like the sun piercing an April shower. All around is a mere mass of eyes, claws, and teeth: the intoxicating effects of dress prevent the girl from yet feeling the whole extent of her misfortune. This is a subject which often returns to the point of Goya's pencil, and he always succeeds in producing very striking effects. Further on, we have el Coco, "Bogy," who frightens little children, and who would frighten many others of more mature age, for, with the exception of the ghost of Samuel in Salvator Rosa's picture of the "Witch of Endor," I do not know of anything more horrible than this goblin. Then, again, we see a number of majos whispering soft things to dapper young damsels on the Prado—handsome creatures with tightly-fitting silk stockings, little pointed slippers, which are only kept on the foot by the tip of the great toe, high-backed tortoiseshell combs, with open carving, and more lofty than the mural crown of Cybele; black lace mantillas, worn like a hood, and casting a velvety shadow on the finest black eyes in the world; short-skirted petticoats loaded with lead, the better to show off the rich form of the hips; beauty spots placed most murderously at the corner of the mouth, and near the temples; heart-breakers sufficient to break all the hearts in Spain, and large fans spread out like the tail of a peacock. There are also hidalgos in pumps and prodigious coats, with flat cocked-hats under their arms, and large bunches of seals and keys hanging on their stomach making their bows à trois temps, leaning over the backs of the chairs, in order to puff, like the smoke of their cigars, clouds of light-hearted madrigals into some thick mass of beautiful black hair, or leading about some divinity of more or less doubtful character, by the tips of their white kid gloves. In another page, again, you see a number of complaisant mothers, giving their too obedient daughters advice worthy of the Macette of Régnier, washing and greasing them to go to the witches' sabbath. The type of the "Complaisant Mother" is marvellously rendered by Goya, who, like all the Spanish painters, possesses a ready and profound sense of the ignoble. It is impossible to fancy anything more grotesquely horrible, more viciously deformed. Each of these frightful old shrews unites in her own person the ugliness of the seven capital sins; compared to them, the Prince of Darkness himself is pretty. Just fancy whole ditches and counterscarps of wrinkles; eyes like live coals that have been extinguished in blood; noses like the neck of an alembic, covered with warts and other excrescences; nostrils like those of the snout of a hippopotamus rendered formidable by stiff bristles; whiskers like a tiger's; a mouth like the slit in the top of a money box, contracted by a horrible and convulsive grin; a something between the spider and the multiped, which makes you feel the same kind of disgust as if you had placed your foot upon the belly of a toad. Such are Goya's works as far as the actual world is concerned, but it is when he abandons himself to his demonographic inspirations that he is especially admirable: no one can represent as he can, floating in the warm atmosphere of a stormy night, dark masses of clouds loaded with vampires, goblins and demons, or make a cavalcade of witches stand out with such startling effect from the sinister background of the horizon.
There is one plate especially which is altogether fantastic, and realizes the most frightful nightmare that ever any human being perceived in his dreams. It is entitled "Y aun no se van." It is frightful; and even Dante himself never reached such a degree of suffocating terror. Fancy a bare mournful plain, over which a shapeless cloud, like a crocodile that has been ripped open, creeps with difficulty along, and a large stone, the top of some tomb or other, which a shrivelled, thin figure is attempting to raise. The stone is, however, too heavy for the fleshless arms that support it, and which you feel are on the point of snapping, and falls to the ground in spite of all the efforts of the spectre and of other smaller phantoms, who are simultaneously stiffening their shadowy arms; many of these smaller phantoms are crushed beneath the stone, which has been raised for a moment. The expression of despair depicted on all these cadaverous physiognomies, in all these eyeless sockets, that see that their labour is useless, is truly tragic, and presents the most melancholy symbol of powerless labour, the most sombre piece of poetry and bitter derision ever produced on the subject of the dead. The plate called "Buen Viage," representing a flight of demons, pupils of the seminary of Barahona, who are winging their course with all possible speed towards some deed without a name, is remarkable for its energy and vivacity. It seems as if you actually heard all these membranes, covered with hair and furnished with claws like the wings of a bat, palpitating in the thick night air. The collection concludes with these words: "Y es ora" (It is the hour); the cock crows, and the phantoms disappear; for it is again day.
As to the esthetic and moral meaning of these works, what was it? We do not know. Goya seems to have given his opinion on the subject in one of his drawings, which represents a man with his head leant upon his arms, and a number of owls and storks flying around. The motto is, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. This is true, but it is terribly severe.