Goya. “Birds of a Feather Flock Together”
“The question is often raised whether men or women are superior. The vices of either proceed from bad upbringing; where the men are depraved the women likewise are depraved.”
From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 5).
This last is the theme of one of his most horribly arresting subjects in oils, an allegory of the Fates, wherein lust and its accompanying exhaustion represent the futility of man’s existence. It is painted in colors of extreme neutrality that almost amount to monochrome. Thus it illustrates a dictum of Goya’s that color no more than line exists in nature; there are only differences of light and shade. It accordingly prepares one for an appreciation of his etchings, in which aquatint plays so intrinsically important a rôle. As a painter he had begun with positive hues—to abandon them, as soon as he reached his maturity, for a sparing use of color and a liberal differentiation of color values. In this he was following Velasquez, whom he admitted to be one of his teachers, the others being Rembrandt and nature. It was Rembrandt, unquestionably, who helped him to a vision of nature that reduced itself to the principle of light and dark; but from nature herself he gained corroboration of the essential truth of such a vision. How true it is the artist of the present day has learned from Goya. Like the latter, he sees color in nature not as positive hues, but as a complex weave of varying intensities of light and shade that play over and transform the hues. It is by the correlation of these varying values that he builds up the structure and secures the planes of his composition, and realizes a unity and harmony of ensemble. And it is in Goya’s etchings that he finds these principles of color in relation to composition represented with most adequate reliance on simplification, organization, and expression—the three watchwords of contemporary artists who are working in the latest modern spirit.
Expression is the keynote of Goya’s etchings, as it is of his paintings. It is the quality of feeling rather than of seeing that is interpreted. Thus, in the oil painting of the Maja, Nude, it was Goya’s intent not so much to represent the young form as to interpret the expression of its youth through the play of light and shadow on the supple torso and limbs; an expression so exquisitely subtle and tender that it defies the copyist’s attempted imitation and eludes the resources of photographic reproduction. Similarly, in the splendid impressionism of the group-portrait of Charles IV and his family it is not the appearance of the jewels, clustered on the breasts of the royal pair, but the effect of their luster that he designed to render. And so throughout his drawings and etchings the prime purpose is not to represent the thing seen but to suggest its effect upon the feelings.
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Goya’s etched work, as catalogued in 1907 by Julius Hofmann, comprises 268 pieces. These include 22 Various Subjects; 16 Studies after Velasquez; 83 Caprices; 21 Proverbs; 82 Disasters of War and 44 Tauromachies, or Scenes from the Bull-Fight. To this list of engraved work are to be added 20 lithographs.
The best known of these groups is Los Caprichos, etched in 1794-1798 but not published until 1803. These Caprices represent the most spontaneous expression of Goya’s temperament and of his attitude toward the life and the society of his day. At the same time, the designs, as in the case of all his etchings and lithographs, were executed with due deliberation, worked out previously in drawings in which every effect was carefully calculated and assured. With corresponding fidelity the drawings were copied on the plate.
Goya. They have Kidnapped Her