Art Research: Francisco Goya

      As part of my art research I am doing a little background work on the only artist I actually know, I watched a fictional film based around nonfictional events and historical figures. The artist was Francisco Goya and the films was entitled “Goyas Ghost”.

 What intrigued me about Goya was his attitude and so called daring approach towards his paintings and his dramatic change between his early works to his later work. I thought it would be best doing more research on who he is and what he has actually done. 

 Francisco Goya was born in a village called Fuendetodos (which is in Spain) on the 30^th March, 1746. He was the third oldest of the five brothers and sisters he had. He went on to be a successful painter, drawer, sculpture and printmaker.

He spent a lot of his young life moving around from place to place until his family settled in the city of Zaragoza. His passion for art started from studying under the painter José Luzán, but his true start into his great path of his art life was when he moved to Madrid and worked besides a painter for the Spanish royalty, Anton Raphael Mengs. He did spend some time working with him but “He clashed with his master, and his examinations were unsatisfactory. Goya submitted entries for the Royal Academy of Fine Art in 1763 and 1766, but was denied entrance.” Due to this inconvenience he moved over to Rome where he started to get his name noted by winning the second prize in a painting competition organized by the city of Parma. In 1771 he returned to Zaragoza and got involved with painting famous pieces such as parts of cupolas of the Basilica of the Pillar. As his name grew he got offers to work alongside the famous artists of that time, one being Francisco Bayeu y Subías. Whilst working along with him he started to create his own paintings which showed his true talent.

 Over the course of the next five years he was designing patterns which were used to decorate the El Escorial walls and the newly built residences of the Spanish monarchs. By doing this he gained connections with members of the royal family, this then lead to Goya work on pieces in the church of San Francisco El Grande. Once he had finished, the royals was so pleased with his work that they appointed him a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art.

He spent most of the 1780’s doing portraits with members of the royal family; eventually he gained the respect of all the family, including Charles III, the king of Spain. When Charles III had passed he was appointed First Court Painter to Charles IV. He made many paintings for the royal family but he started to take a path that would be frowned upon, he would draw them as they actually were no matter how ugly they looked, which could cause serious offense. Casing point would be the Queen Maria Luisa; in the pictures he would draw her as she was, an old wrinkly horrible woman instead of making her look beautiful which any other artist would have done. One of his most famous royal family portraits is of Charles IV of Spain and His Family, researchers figured out that he had a second meaning to what he drew; he had spent a lot of his time the royal family and had learnt or had interrupted their personal lives. This image show the Queen Maria Luisa in the centre of the group portrait, that was meant to signify her position of the family, it is to believed she was the true power hand of the family and she had true control over them all even though it was meant to be the King. From the back left of the painting you can see the artist himself looking out at the viewer, and the painting behind the family depicts Lot and his daughters, thus once again echoing the underlying message of corruption. Lucky for him this wasn’t noted by the royal family and he continued serving them whilst working on his own projects.

Sometime during 1792-93, Goya had contracted an illness of some kind which infected his ear and eventually made him deaf. He spent most of his time experimenting on a range of portraits and pictures of his own. Whilst in his deaf state, Goya started his best known paintings, “The Nude Maja” this is an image of a naked woman laying on a bed but what made this so great was how much it was hated, it is “said to be the first explicit depiction of female pubic hair in a large Western painting,”. Three years later after it was finished, 1803, Goya made a second completely identical painting of the woman but more tasteful by having the women wearing clothes. This latest painting didn’t give the same powerful effect as the Naked Maja but is considered teasing but tasteful.

During the time the Peninsular War where the French invaded Spain, Goya had changed his approach of “fine” art and had started working towards more decrepitude pictures .The war caused an emotional effect on him from the horrors he saw, of innocent people dying in the street, he fled to isolate himself from the rest of the world and began to create “Black Paintings”. His black paintings were a reflection on his own fear of his insanity and his outlook on humanity, one of his most horrific images was “Saturn Devouring His Sons”. As you can see this image was completely different from his earlier stuff, the war had changed him and his art proved it.

Goya decided to leave Spain and live in France in May of 1824 but ended up in Bordeaux and passed away at the age of 82 in 1826. As you can tell he had a great life as an artist even if towards the end he started create horror images, they were still hard hitting and have had an impact on many artists since his time. What I respect about it him isn’t his images, it was his attitude whilst creating these images, leaving messages that reflected the society at the time.

Here are a couple more of his images.