Francisco De Goya
(30 March 1746 - 16 April 1828) |
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portraiture, fantasy & horror subjects Art Work
| Name: |
Francisco De Goya |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Aragon, Spain |
| Nationality: |
Spanish |
| Birth: |
30 March 1746 |
| Death: |
16 April 1828 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
portraiture, fantasy & horror subjects |
| Medium: |
oil painting, etching, aquatints |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Romanticism |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Printmaker
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Biography
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish painter and printmaker of the late Romantic period. He is best known for his delicate color palettes,
Born in Aragon in 1746, Goya was the son of a gilder. In 1760, Goya was apprenticed to painter Jose Luzan. Upon moving to Madrid, Goya trained with Anton Raphael Mengs, whom the younger artist conflicted with. After a trip to 1771 to Italy to study the old masters, Goya returned to his home of Zaragoza, where he trained with the Neoclassical painter Francisco Bayeau. In this period, Goya began to evidence the mastery of color and refined tonalities that would make his style so popular.
In the 1760s, through connections with his teacher Bayeau, Goya began work on many large scale decorative efforts for the Escorial and the Palacio Real del Pardo. His work met the approval and appreciation of the Spanish nobility and brought him great popularity among his new noble patrons. His commissions were dominated by portraiture, of which the subjects included the Duke of Osuna, the Countess-Duchess of Benavente, and the king and royal family. Shortly afterward in 1786, Goya was appointed to be Charles III's court painter and later in 1789 his successor Charles IV's as well.
In 1792, after a serious bout of cholera, Goya was rendered deaf, and the artist became increasingly reserved and introspective. His paintings became darker with macabre undertones. In 1793-1794, Goya completed a series of small paintings on tin, Fantasy and Invention, which were filled with images of grotesque monsters and nightmarish narratives. In his later years, Goya purchased a house and filled the walls of it with illustrations of witches and demons, the most famous of which, Saturn Devouring His Sons, depicts the god Saturn tearing apart the flesh of a child. During the 1810s, in response to the Peninsular War and Spain's invasion by France, Goya painted The Disasters of War, a collection of aquatint prints condemning the inhumanity of the battlefield in the face of moral conscience. These prints were not published until some three decades after Goya's death.
The most famous of Goya's paintings, however, is reserved for La Maja Desnuda and La Maja Vestida. The former shows a reclining woman nude, while the latter depicts her in the same pose clothed. La Maja Desnuda met widespread outrage in 1800 when it was completed for its candid eroticism and complete lack of allegorical subtext. Goya, despite the criticism however, refused to paint clothes on her and subsequently produced La Maja Vestida. The pair of paintings were confiscated by the Spanish Inquisition in 1813 for profanity but only returned in 1836.
In 1824, Goya moved to France and settled in the town of Bordeaux. Restless, Goya returned to Spain two years later, but his health declined steadily, and he died back in Bordeaux in 1828. |
Samples of Work
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