Part 1

MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR EDITED BY-- M. HENRY ROUJON

GOYA

(1746-1826)

_IN THE SAME SERIES_

REYNOLDS VELASQUEZ GREUZE TURNER BOTTICELLI ROMNEY REMBRANDT BELLINI FRA ANGELICO ROSSETTI RAPHAEL LEIGHTON HOLMAN HUNT TITIAN MILLAIS LUINI FRANZ HALS CARLO DOLCI GAINSBOROUGH TINTORETTO VAN DYCK DA VINCI WHISTLER RUBENS BOUCHER HOLBEIN BURNE-JONES LE BRUN CHARDIN MILLET RAEBURN SARGENT CONSTABLE MEMLING FRAGONARD DÜRER LAWRENCE HOGARTH WATTEAU MURILLO WATTS INGRES COROT DELACROIX FRA LIPPO LIPPI PUVIS DE CHAVANNES MEISSONIER GÉRÔME VERONESE VAN EYCK FROMENTIN MANTEGNA PERUGINO ROSA BONHEUR BASTIEN-LEPAGE GOYA

GOYA

BY FR. CRASTRE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY NEW YORK--PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

March, 1914

THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A

CONTENTS

Page

The Youth of Goya 21

The Glorious Period 48

The Closing Years 77

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate

I. Ferdinand Guillemardet Frontispiece Museum of the Louvre

II. La Maja Clothed 14 Museum of the Prado, Madrid

III. The Woman with the Fan 24 Museum of the Louvre

IV. Portrait of Goya 34 Museum of the Prado, Madrid

V. The Duchess of Alba 40 Collection of the Duke of Alba, Madrid

VI. King Charles IV and his Family 50 Museum of the Prado, Madrid

VII. La Tirana 60 Museum of the Prado, Madrid

VIII. Josefa Bayeu 70 Museum of the Prado, Madrid

On a certain clear morning in the year 1760, a monk from the convent of Santa Fé, near Saragossa, was proceeding leisurely along the road which leads to that city, and reciting his breviary as he went. Raising his eyes from between two psalms, he perceived a young lad of some fifteen years of age deeply absorbed in drawing pictures with a bit of charcoal on one of the walls which bounded the way. The monk was a lover of the arts and had himself some little skill in drawing. Becoming interested, he drew nearer, and was amazed at the aptitude shown by the boy. Upon questioning him, he was much pleased with his replies and was completely won by his engaging manners. Without further reflection, he inquired the way to the home of the lad’s parents, poor peasants of the immediate neighbourhood, and had no difficulty in persuading them to entrust their son to him, promising to make him a painter of whom they would some day be proud.

History has not preserved the name of the worthy monk so kindly disposed to art, but the boy was destined to make his own name illustrious: Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, the poor son of farming folk of Saragossa, fulfilled the promises of his patron. He had talent; better yet, he had genius; he fraternized with princes and with kings, and the renown of his glory restored its lost dignity to the art of Spain and did honour to painting throughout the world.

The advent of Goya in the middle of the eighteenth century marks a sort of providential date in the art of the peninsula. The Spanish school had fallen into profound decadence. Of the great traditions of Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran, and El Greco, nothing survived save the regret of knowing that they were forever lost. All the prodigious strength and powerful realism of that glorious period had become degenerate, enfeebled, anaemic to the point of utter decrepitude. In the horde of artists of that time, not a single hand was capable of taking up the brush let fall by the great predecessors. One only in all their number, a certain Claudio Coello, mustered sufficient energy to attempt to carry on the broken tradition. With praiseworthy insistence and undoubted talent he endeavoured to restore its bygone dignity to the painting of his time. Among many other noteworthy works, a magnificent canvas from his hand may still be seen in the sacristy of the Escurial. But this unlucky artist, like all the others, had come too late into a world which had grown too old. He could no longer be understood. The same decadence had overspread the whole of Europe, but to a greater degree in Spain than elsewhere. Politics, customs, traditions, popular taste, all bore the imprint of that degeneracy which heralds the end of a race. What could a Claudio Coello do in a society that had disintegrated to such a degree? His strength seemed too brutal, his realism was accused of barbarity, and the conscientiousness of his line-work caused him to be considered as a painter who had become old-fashioned and had fallen behind his times. All the favour of that period was bestowed upon the _fa presto_ school of painting. Luca Giordano, who usurped Coello’s place in the regard of Philip II., had begun to inundate Spain with his facile and spiritless productions. He covered the walls of the Escurial with frescoes brushed in with a turn of the wrist, the dexterity of which ill concealed their absolute lack of inspiration. In his wake a swarm of Neapolitan painters, equally dexterous, but of even less worth, swooped down upon the peninsula, and day by day still further perverted the standard of popular taste. With the dawn of the seventeenth century the decadence, instead of diminishing, became more accentuated. The Neapolitans had been succeeded by Frenchmen--but what Frenchmen! Their art had neither the nobility of Poussin, nor the greatness of Le Brun, nor the suavity of Le Sueur; they bore such names as Ranc, Hovasse, Louis and Michel Vanloo, and their manner drew its inspiration from the worst type of composition brought into fashion by Mignard. Their whole effort was confined to producing the merely pretty, and their tastelessness was absolutely, yet regrettably, adapted to the growing affectation of the century. After them came the turn of the Tiepolos: these latter were not merely remarkable virtuosos of the palette; their prodigious facility was frequently ennobled by genuine talent; their line-work, though too often slighted, still showed a certain degree of conscientiousness, and some of their works are really worthy of admiration. But they too were infected with the malady of the century; they sacrificed themselves to the taste of their day, which was definitely degraded to the extravagances of fashion and the frivolities of gallantry. They were wholly lacking in the ability to impart to this type of painting the vivacious charm which the graceful and smiling ease of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher bestowed upon it in France. There was no ground for hoping that they would ever effect a renaissance of the Spanish school.

Finally Charles III. summoned to Madrid a painter of German origin, Mengs by name, who at that time was regarded as the Messiah of an art which was destined to unite “the grace of Apelles, the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colouring of Titian!” Unusually gifted though he was, Mengs did not possess the necessary calibre to fulfil such brilliant promises. Haunted by the great compositions of Le Brun, he confined himself to the mythological order of painting and drew his inspiration from his illustrious model, without ever achieving an equal eminence or duplicating the latter’s admirable skill in composition. Upon his appointment as Superintendent of Fine-Arts in Spain, he established a sort of artistic dictatorship, which forced Spanish painting as a whole to adopt his own special aesthetic creed. The influence of Mengs would have been even more disastrous than that of his predecessors, if Providence had not placed Goya in the path of the artist monk of Saragossa.

Goya made his appearance, and with him Spanish art underwent a renewal and an aggrandizement. With one formidable backward leap, he attained the point of the broken tradition, in order to reweld the glorious chain. No intermediary connects him with the splendid lineage of Spanish painters. He proceeds directly from them. He is the natural heir of Velazquez and Zurbaran. He has their ardour, their vehemence, their passionate love for nature; like them, he finds the source of his strength in direct observation; as with them, the secret of his genius resides in that inner flame which bursts out of bounds in blazing flashes, with no clever trickery, no premeditation, but with that spontaneity which is born only of a clear vision, aided by a vigorous brush.

Nevertheless, this descendant of bygone masters is the most modern of all Spanish painters. He is never imitative, he always creates. From the living springs of great art he draws only what he needs to sustain his strength: a pious reverence for form, conscientiousness in line-work, sobriety of colour, and harmony of the component parts. For the rest, he is wholly of his own time, and of none other than his own time. He is truly the painter of national Spanish life. What he paints most willingly, most gladly, are the dances, the games, the joyous gatherings, the _corridas_, full of ardour and of movement, the _majas_, the _manolas_, the _toreros_, all the popular types; and one and all, as he pictures them, are spirited, life-like, entertaining, and well grouped, standing out boldly against their background of spreading fields, or bathing gaily in the violent clarity of the sunshine of Castile.

When considered under this double aspect, surrounded by the twin aureole of classicism and realism, Goya is seen to be an exceptional nature. He builds his fantasies upon a solid foundation of technique, and it is precisely because he founds his work upon this impregnable basis that he is able without apprehension to challenge the judgment of future centuries, and that his name will descend through the ages crowned with an unfading glory.

HIS YOUTH

Francisco José Goya was born at Fuendetodos, in the province of Aragon, on the 13th of March, 1746. His father, José Goya, and his mother, Gracia Lucientes, were humble peasants and lived upon the product of the sluggish fields that surrounded their modest home. What the childhood of José was, we do not know, for his biographers are silent upon this point. They content themselves with saying that he aided his parents in the daily round of tasks upon the farm. As to his education, it was certainly that of all the young peasant boys of the Spanish farming districts. The child must have acquired the first rudiments from the village priest, or perhaps from the monks of the nearest convent. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic made up the whole equipment that young José possessed at the age of fifteen. How his taste for drawing was first born, what occurrence or what object awakened his artistic instinct, we do not know. Perhaps, like so many others, he became suddenly conscious of his vocation at the sight of some of those cruel and violent pictures representing scenes of the Passion, such as abound in Spanish churches, and it is not unlikely that his youthful soul received a profound and lasting impression.

However this may be, at the age of fifteen Goya could handle his pencil with sufficient assurance to astonish the worthy monk of Saragossa, who was a judge of such matters. The latter conducted his young protégé to the city, and a few days later entered him as a pupil in the studio of Don José Lujan Martinez.

This Lujan was a Saragossan by birth, but he had studied painting in Naples under the guidance of Mastréolo. Possessing considerable talent, he enjoyed a great reputation in his native city. Upon his return from Italy, he had founded a free school of design, a sort of academy which was maintained wholly by his own contributions, both of money and of time.

Among the artists who were trained in this studio, there were some who left names highly esteemed in Spain: Beraton, Vallespin, Antonio Martinez the goldsmith, and Francisco Bayeu de Subias. With the last named of this group Goya formed a particular attachment, notwithstanding that Bayeu was twelve years the elder.

Goya remained in Lujan’s studio for between four and five years. His fiery and impulsive temperament had already begun to declare itself, and his master did not always succeed in moderating his exuberance. He manifested an extraordinary diligence in his work, he was enamoured of his art, and showed exceptional aptitude for it. From the first months he became the most interesting feature in the studio; his imagination, his enthusiasm, his assurance often surprised his master and stupefied his comrades, who were accustomed to a calmer and less violent manner of painting. At this epoch his character was already beginning to form; one could foresee in him the man that he was destined to be throughout his life. He was no less ardent in his pleasures than in his work. He was the true type of the hot-headed Aragonais, and at the age of nineteen revealed himself, headstrong, turbulent, a born fighter. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the battles that occurred so frequently at that time throughout Aragon between the young men of the different parishes. Uniting in rival gangs, fiercely jealous of one another, they were always ready on holiday evenings to settle some question of superiority, and any excuse for an encounter was welcomed by them. More than once, for the greater honour of San Luis or of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the club and knife scattered blood over the streets and suburbs of Saragossa.

Goya took part in all these battles, flung himself into them, body and soul, tumultuously aiding and abetting this hazardous and adventurous mode of life, which had the flavour of romantic fiction. In the course of one of these collisions, three young men belonging to the rival faction were left stiff and stark on the battle-ground. Goya, who was one of those most directly implicated in the affair, was warned that the Inquisition intended to arrest him. Although it no longer possessed the terrible power of earlier times, the Inquisition was even then by no means light-handed, and there was still serious danger in bringing oneself under its notice. Goya was well aware of this, and he did not wait for the arrival of the _alguazils_. That same night he left the city and wended his way to Madrid, which, as it happened, it had long been his dream to visit.

In Madrid he once more ran across his friend Bayeu, who had been living there for the past two years. Bayeu was drawing a pension from the academy of San Fernando, and he also had the good luck of being favoured by Mengs, the all powerful Superintendent of Fine-Arts, who had asked him to collaborate in his great task of decorating the royal palace.

Bayeu welcomed his young comrade with open arms and invited him to have a share in his present work. But we must infer that Mengs’s technique and method of teaching were already displeasing to Goya, for he courteously declined the offer. In any case, he had not come to Madrid in search of employment, but for the purpose of continuing his education. All day long he visited the artistic marvels of the capital, made the rounds of churches and convents, studied the old masters, executed copies, and even penetrated into the royal dwellings in order to admire the works of art which they contained, observing extensively, reflecting, comparing, and, in a word, equipping his profound intelligence with precious material for the future. But in Madrid, just as in Saragossa, work was not allowed to interfere with his pleasures. He was always to be found in quest of adventure; he roamed the streets, sword under cape and guitar in hand, serenading the sparkling black eyes that looked down laughingly at him from the ambush of their window-blinds, and stirring husbands to a jealous fury; or again, breaking the peace with a crowd of boisterous companions; or still again, scaling the balcony of his latest conquest, “and thus playing the prelude to that reputation of an audacious, swash-buckling Don Juan, which later was destined to earn him, even among the lower classes, an incredible notoriety.”

At this period Goya was a young man of haughty presence, somewhat below the average stature, but exceedingly well proportioned. Although his features lacked regularity, his face was attractive. It had a pleasant air of joviality and frankness; there was a sparkle to his eye and a lurking spirit of mischief around his lips. He had, furthermore, an affable manner, an unabashed assurance, a mad bravado, and the impudence of a lackey. Thanks to the friends whom he had gained, he was favourably received by a goodly number of distinguished families, where the charm of his personality played havoc with the hearts of the women.

This agreeable pastime could not fail to entail its own dangers, as Goya was not long in learning by experience. On a certain fine evening, when he had doubtless been lurking beneath some balcony, he was picked up in an obscure side street, where he lay stretched at full length, with a gaping poignard thrust in his back. It was necessary to keep him hidden for a time, in order to protect him from the unwelcome curiosity of the police; and later, when the affair had become noised abroad, he was forced to quit Madrid, just as he had quitted Saragossa, clandestinely, without even waiting for his wound to be completely healed.

In order to give his escapade a chance to be forgotten, Goya, who for some time past had desired to visit Italy, set sail, with Rome for his destination.

From the moment of his arrival he came fully under the spell of the marvels accumulated in the Eternal City. He passed entire days in the presence of the masterpieces of the great artists. He admired them with all his heart, yet without surrendering his right to independent criticism. He recognized instinctively that there was nothing in all these illustrious compositions which corresponded to his own personal temperament, and that his fiery soul could ill adapt itself to the calculated and almost geometric composition of the great frescoes in the Vatican. But he possessed too deep a reverence for art to disdain the admirable science of those great forerunners. There, beyond question, was the ideal opportunity for study; and in the presence of those celebrated canvases he absolutely forgot himself; he analyzed their intimate beauties, compared the styles and colour schemes of the different schools, scrutinized their methods, and forced himself to penetrate and understand them. He did not attempt to copy a single one of them; he felt that he would gain nothing by doing so, but that on the contrary he might lose. This singular method of abstract study, which may be called the method of intuition, explains perhaps how so frank an individuality as that of Goya, far from being enfeebled by contact with the past, became on the contrary stronger and more genuinely alive. As a matter of fact, his talent owes nothing, or practically nothing, to the art of Italy.

During his sojourn in Rome, Goya came in contact with David. Curious phenomenon; these two natures who were so different in character and temperament, and whose artistic tastes were almost antagonistic, felt themselves invincibly attracted towards each other. It is true that they both shared to an equal degree the philosophic ideas of the period, and that they had the same ideal; namely, the liberation of the people. They were destined later, each in his own country, to be caught in the full whirlwind of the Revolution; and these mutual ties, divined rather than expressed, created between David and Goya an undying friendship. Because they liked each other, they appreciated each other’s work, in spite of the divergence between their talents; and Goya, even in extreme old age, always spoke with emotion of the “great David.”

In Rome, as in Madrid, Goya was not long in distinguishing himself by perilous escapades. Señor Carderera relates that at one time “He carved his name with his knife on the lantern of Michelangelo’s cupola, on a corner of a certain stone which not one of the artists, German, English, or French, who had preceded him in the mad ascent, had succeeded in reaching; and on another day he made the circuit of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, barely supporting himself upon the narrow projection of the cornice.”

But these were merely childish pranks; before long he had involved himself in a far more dangerous adventure, especially in the city of the Popes. He had become infatuated with a young girl in the higher circles of Roman society, and formed the project of eloping with her. Being warned in time, the parents placed their daughter beyond his reach, within the austere shelter of a convent. This setback, however, was not sufficient to discourage the gallant artist, it only spurred him on to bolder ventures. He resolved to snatch his fair lady from the very hands of her jailors, and one night he attempted to invade the convent itself. But he was captured and handed over to justice. In order to extricate himself from this awkward dilemma, far more awkward at Rome than it would have been anywhere else, he was forced to appeal to the Spanish ambassador, who intervened and demanded his surrender by the Holy See. Goya was restored to liberty, but on condition that he should take immediate leave of Rome.