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The Horrors of War: One Can't Look

Francisco Goya · 1810–20, published 1863

Francisco Goya: 1746–1828

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Other names (40)

de goya y lucientes francisco jose, Don Francesco Goya, f. de goya, F. Goya, f. j. de goya, Francesco Goya, francesco jose goya, Francisco de Gova y Lucientes, Francisco de Goya, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de Paula Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de Paula Jose Goya y Lucientes, francisco goya, Francisco Goya Lucientes, Francisco Goya Y Lucientes, francisco j. goya, francisco jose de goya, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose de Goya y Luzientes, francisco jose goya, Francisco José Goya Lucientes, Francisco Jose y Lucientes de Goya, Francisco Paula Jose Goya y Lucientes, Francisko Goja, franc. jose de goya y lucientes, Fransisko Goiia-i-Lusientes, Fransisko Khose de Goia, Fransisko Khose de Goiia, fr. goya, fr. j. de goya y lucientes, fr. jose de goya, Goya, goya f., Goya y Lucientes, j. de goya, j. f. de goya y lucientes, José de Goya y Lucientes, José Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de Paula, Ko-ya, Louis-Philippe Goya

Biography

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko xoˈse ðe ˈɣoʝa i luˈθjentes]; 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of Western art.

Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Aragon to a middle-class family in 1746. He studied painting from age 14 under José Luzán y Martínez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in 1773. Goya became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and this early portion of his career is marked by portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and Rococo-style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.

Although Goya's letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts. He had a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 that left him deaf, after which his work became progressively darker and more pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints, and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social, and political levels and contrast with his social climbing. He was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France.

In 1799, Goya became Primer Pintor de Cámara (Prime Court Painter), the highest rank for a Spanish court painter. In the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1800–01, he painted Charles IV of Spain and His Family, also influenced by Velázquez.

In 1807, Napoleon led the French army into the Peninsular War against Spain. Goya remained in Madrid during the war, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he did not speak his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his Disasters of War series of prints (although published 35 years after his death) and his 1814 paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808.

Other works from his mid-period include the Caprichos and Los Disparates etching series, and a wide variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches, fantastical creatures and religious and political corruption, all of which suggest that he feared for both his country's fate and his own mental and physical health.

His late period culminates with the Black Paintings of 1819–1823, applied on oil on the plaster walls of his house the Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man) where, disillusioned by political and social developments in Spain, he lived in near isolation. Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may have been his lover. There he completed his La Tauromaquia series and a number of other works. Following a stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side, Goya died and was buried on 16 April 1828 aged 82.

Wikipedia contributors. Opening excerpt, formatted for reading. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source revision.

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The Horrors of War: One Can't Look — Francisco Goya

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The Horrors of War: One Can't Look

1810–20, published 1863

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etching
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1922.542
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CC0 1.0License details

Francisco Goya. The Horrors of War: One Can't Look. Francisco Goya; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Dudley P. Allen Fund. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art

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Francisco Goya. The Horrors of War: One Can't Look. Francisco Goya; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Dudley P. Allen Fund. CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Full-frame proportional resize and JPEG compression.