Exile in France
1824-1828
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1824 National Gallery in London founded. The English poet Lord Byron dies in
Greece.
1824 Goya obtains leave to take the cure in France,and leaves in
June. After a stay of two months in Paris he settles in Bordeaux
with Leocadia.
1825 Paints miniatures on ivory and works on lithographs of
bullfighting scenes. He becomes critically ill.
1825 Manufacture of the sulfur match.
1826 The last death sentence for heresy is carried out in Spain. The French
physicist Niepce produces the first heliograph, a direct precursor of
photography.
1826 Journey to Madrid to obtain a royal pension; receives
permission to return to France. Portraits of friends.
1827 Summer: last journey to Madrid. The Milkmaid of Bordeaux.
1828 A young man of unknown origin, Kaspar Hauser, appears in
Nuremberg. Thought to be of noble birth, he becomes an international celebrity.
1828 Goya's grandson Mariano arrives in Bordeaux.
Goya dies on April
16.
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Francisco de Goya
Corrida
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At the age of 77 Goya decided to leave his home. The reason was
the political situation in Spain under the despotic rule of
Ferdinand VII. Although Goya was still the official First Court
Painter, his position was compromised. His prints alone, which he
stored in his house, would have been incriminating, since even the
possession of documents or caricatures that were deemed heretical or
critical of the government was a punishable offense. His companion
Leocadia was even more seriously threatened because of her known
liberal views. They agreed to go into exile in France. Thus Bordeaux
became the final stage in Goya's life. The grizzled, stone-deaf
painter maintained an astonishing degree of activity till the end.
Driven by simple curiosity, he traveled alone to Paris. He
experimented with new artistic techniques and created images that
were far in advance of the art of his times. His creative powers
were undiminished right up to his death.
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Francisco de Goya
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux
1825—27
Oil on canvas, 74 x 68 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Vicente Lopez
Portrait of Francisco de Goya
1824-1828
Oil on canvas 93 x 75 cm
Madrid, Prado
An artist with a precise style, and a pupil of Mengs,
Lopez was a
sought-after court painter under Ferdinand VII.
He executed this
imposing portrait of Goya while the latter was in Madrid.
Among I he
many self-portraits of Goya there is none that reproduces
his
external appearance so exactly; and none, either, that shows him
in
such a proud pose, is the successful artist.
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From Madrid to Bordeaux
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Francisco de Goya
'I am Still Learning' ('Aun aprendo')
1824-28
Black chalk, 195 x 150 mm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
This drawing of a fragile old man seems to be a symbol of Goya's own
attitude in old age.
In spite of his infirmity, he never lost his
curiosity about life.
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Francisco de Goya
A bad husband
1824-1828
Charcoal on paper 18.5x13.5 cm
Madrid, Prado
Sitting on his wife's shoulders and using a whip, a man beats her as he would a beast
of burden. Goya often dealt with relationships between the sexes in his
satirical drawings. As with other themes, he adopted a highly critical
viewpoint. In the last years of his life, he often used
black chalk for his drawings and frequently added a few words of
commentary.
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Goya made preparations for his exile. His house, the House of the
Deaf Man, was transferred to his 17-year-old grandson Mariano so
that it could not be confiscated. Then he hid himself for three
months with a friendly priest and waited for a favorable moment to
submit to the king a petition to leave the country; his pretext was
that he wanted to take the cure for his poor health at the spa in
Plombicres in France. Permission was granted. He had to use this
ruse in order to secure not only a leave of absence, but also his
annual salary of 50,000 reales. He left immediately and, after an
arduous journey of 900 kilometers (560 miles), he arrived at the
home in Bordeaux of his old friend Leandro Fernandez Moratin, who
had already been living in exile for some time. The latter reported
in a letter that "Goya has actually arrived, deaf, old, clumsy and
weak, and without speaking a word of French. He has come with no
servants ... but is so eager to get to know everyone."
Hardly had Goya recovered from the exhausting trip when he went on
to Paris. He stayed there for two months and lived with relatives in
a smart, lively quarter of the city. From police reports - all
Spanish emigrants were watched by undercover agents - we know that
he mainly spent his time on tourist visits and going for walks.
Anything that particularly interested him, he sketched in his
sketchbook, adding the words "I saw this myself." It is possible
that he also visited the current special exhibition at the Louvre,
which included works by his younger contemporaries
Jean-August-Dominique Ingres
(1780-1867) and Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863).
Back in Bordeaux, Goya met his companion Leocadia and her little
daughter Rosario. Together, they moved into a furnished flat in the
Allee de Tourny. But soon he was drawn back to Spain. Moratin was
surprised at his friend's energy. "If you permitted it, he would
travel back on a stubborn mule with his beret, his coat, his
stirrups, his bottle of wine and his rucksack." In fact, Goya
traveled twice more to Madrid in the following year, not least to
make sure that his pension would be paid to him.
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Francisco de Goya
Portrait of Juan Bautista, Count of Muguiro
1827
Oil on canvas 102 x 85 cm Madrid, Prado
This painting is one of the last portraits by Goya and shows a distant
relative he had met in Bordeaux.
A fairly lengthy inscription
indicates that Goya painted this portrait at the age of 81.
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The Bullfights
"Tauromaquia"
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Bullfighting is the only art where the artist is in danger of his
life
and in which the degree of brilliance in the execution depends
on
his sense of honor.
Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
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Francisco de Goya
A Village Bullfight
Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid
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Like many of his contemporary fellow-Spaniards, Goya was,
throughout his life, an aficionado, a keen follower of bullfighting.
According to his own testimony, he was even daring enough in his
youth to try his skill and courage against a young bull. During the
second half of the 18th century bullfighting was more popular than
ever, before it was prohibited in 1805.In Saragossa, and later even
in the Madrid ring and in Seville in Andalusia, Goya attended some of
the most famous bullfights of his day.
As a motif in his art, bullfighting occurs throughout his work,
beginning with his tapestry designs and continuing right up to his
last paintings, executed in exile in France. He often selected
scenes from bullfights as a motif when he painted pictures without a
commission. The small painting Village Bullfight, for example, shows
an improvised corrida, as in the Spanish countryside. The
spectators have gathered in a broad circle in the village square and
are watching as the mounted torero and the bull face each other.
Immediately after the war of liberation against the French, Goya
worked intensively on the subject of bullfighting and created a
series of 33 etchings under the title La Tauromaquia
(The Art of
Bullfighting). At that time in Spain, the motif of the bullfight had
become a symbol of the struggle against the Napoleonic troops; in
popular prints the bull stood for the French, while the courageous
torero represented the people of Spain.
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Francisco de Goya
Picador Caught by the Bull
1793
Oil on tinplate, 43 x 32 cm
British Rail Pension Trustee Co., London
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Initially, Goya's graphics were based on a history of Spanish
bullfighting written by the father of his friend Moratin. During the
work, however, he left the historic framework behind and selected
the subjects arbitrarily. He remembered the legendary bullfights of
his youth and depicted the most dramatic moments of the corrida. In
these prints Goya demonstrated an extensive knowledge of the
sport. He manipulates his etching tools with the same precision and
skill as the picadors and toreadors use in wielding their lances and
swords. Light and shade are distributed in a masterly fashion, and
print after print reveals new compositions full of tension. Goya
boldly juxtaposes full and empty spaces, as for example in the print
An unfortunate occurrence among the spectators at the Madrid Ring.
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Francisco de Goya
An unfortunate occurrence among the spectators at the Madrid Ring
Tauromaquia No. 21
1815-1816
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In exile, almost 80 years of age, Goya returned once more in 1825 to
this old passion, and exploited the newly invented technique of
lithography for a small series entitled The Bulls of Bordeaux.
In
prints such as The Famous American Mariano Ceballos, he
mainly reproduced the atmosphere in the bullfighting arena, the
spellbound fascination of the spectators, the air tense with
excitement. As though drawn by magic, the spectators press through
the barriers and move closer and closer to the blood-soaked
spectacle. At about the same time, Goya painted a few small pictures
on bullfighting themes. The drama of the event was expressed in these
with impasto color and a complete lack of detail. The churned-up colors,
the shimmering reflections of light, the mobile shadows -everything
contributes to the impression of dynamic movement.
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Francisco de Goya
The Famoust American Mariano Ceballos
1825
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Francisco de Goya
Corrida
1825
Madrid, Prado
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Francisco de Goya
The Speed and Daring of Juanito Apinani in the Ring of
Madrid
Tauromaquia No. 21
1815-1816
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