Printmakers

"But to get back to the point: did you ever imagine that your dad, who lives so far away from the bustle and intrigue of the world, working on his prints day after day like a hermit, would some day be drawn into the sickening scene of vain officialdom, despite himself?.. .But what on earth can I do about it? Luckily I can swear by God and all his angels that I never moved a finger to get the decoration or licked the boots of any bigwigs."

"Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i.e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon.. .It has a great deal in common with my own motifs, which I make turn on various axes too. Nowadays I have such a powerful sense of relationship, of affinity, that when I am listening to Bach I frequently get inspired and feel an overwhelming instinct for his insistent rhythm, a cadence seeking something of the infinite. In the Fugue everything is based on a single motif, often consisting of just a few notes. In my work, too, everything revolves around a single closed contour.."

"No recognition / Nadie se conoce' [Goya wrote on this plate no. 6:] The world is a masquerade, faces, costumes, voices, everything a lie. Each person wishes to appear what he is not. The whole world deceives itself, and no one recognizes himself."

"[because Goya was] the stepping stone between the Old Masters and the Great Moderns like Cézanne."

"He [Goya] once declared that his real masters were Vélasquez, Rembrandt and Nature. Vélasquez of course he knew intimately being surrounded in Madrid.. .He would have known Rembrandt only through prints, since so little work of the Dutch master's painted work has made its way to Spain."

"..and much of his works consists of portraits that, fairly seen, are not in the least derogatory of those who commissioned them. The idea of Goya as an artist naturally 'against' the system is pretty much a modern myth. But it is based on a fundamental truth of his character; he was a man of great and by times heroic independence.."

"Mengs [the official royal painter of the Spanish court] gave Goya official help and encouragement. Tiepolo [famous mural painter then] however, directly influenced his [Goya's] art. It was an odd juxtaposition.. ..at the end of the eighteenth century, two artists more unlike one another fostering the career of a third [young Goya].. ..What Goya recognized in Tiepolo was his abundant appetite for fantasy and caprice."

"With Goya we do not think of the studio or even of the artist at work. We think only of the event. Does this imply that 'The Third of May' is a kind of superior journalism, the record of an incident in which depth of focus is sacrificed to an immediate effect? I am ashamed to say that I once thought so; but the longer I look at this extraordinary picture and at Goya's other works, the more clearly I recognize that I was mistaken."

"Eugene Delacroix copied over fifty of the plates in 'Los Caprichos', with a care and patience, says Charles Yriarte, of which few would consider him capable. The etchings appealed to many of the artists of the French Romantic movement, and some, like Louis Boulanger, borrowed freely from them. Daumier was strongly influenced by their power. Our own banker-poet, Samuel Rogers, added the set to his library. Theophile Gautier was no mediocre critic, and several of the most brilliant pages in his 'Tro los Montes' endeavor to describe the fantastic invention lavished on the plates of 'Los Caprichos', in his 'Voyage en Espagne' [= Tro los Montes]. Paris, 1845. pp. 129-134."

"As a painter Goya's reputation was slow in crossing the Pyrenees, and then was chiefly based upon the testimony of the few strangers who had visited Madrid. But when the volumes of 'Los Caprichos' reached Paris, the unchallenged center of European art, these extraordinary works attracted unstinting appreciation, and awoke general curiosity with respect to the personality of the almost unknown Spaniard. Officers attached to the English army quartered in the Peninsula sent copies of 'Los Caprichos' home to London. Later still the book penetrated into Germany. These etchings thus formed the foundation of Goya's cosmopolitan celebrity. 'Los Caprichos' consists of seventy-two plates, which are usually dated 1796-1797."

"Goya was closely studying the Velazquez's portraits [in the Spanish royal palace ], and he decided to etch them. In 1778 he completed eleven large etching plates. During the same year he delivered fourteen of the tapestry cartoons for the royal tapestry factory in Madrid, so that his energy must have been terrific. They show no sign of haste, and must have been undertaken as a pleasure. Goya may have received some vague promise of state support. The multiplication of these masterpieces was a patriotic duty, and Godoy did well to buy the plates. But this purchase did not take place until 1793, so that Goya's labour must have had little financial result in 1778."

"Goya, ever ready for an artistic experiment, tried his hand at the comparatively new invention of aquatint. Several of the plates of are in pure aquatint (No. 32 is a fine example and how cleverly he succeeded is proved in 'A rough night' [= 'A Bad Night' [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=A+bad+Night+Goya&title=Special:Search&profile=default&fulltext=1&searchToken=dmndd6r6hf4vh49tura06ygnr ]. A recent historian of this method writes: "Goya raised the combination of etching with aquatint to a position of surpassing merit.. .He will always remain the master of mixed aquatint engraving, and his work should be carefully studied by all interested in the legitimate scope of aquatint engraving."

"But where Goya shows the most exquisite sensibility and profound psychology is in these two portraits of one person, in which he incorporates the whole story of a dreamer swayed in life and death by the highest ideals, a woman of a race of poets and artists, Dona Antonia de Zarate. Though in the first portrait he represented her smiling and in perfect health, in the second [painted in 1810-11 by Goya] he knew her existence was undermined by a treacherous disease which was to cause her death. Never have we felt more deeply the impression of pathos than before this presentment of a soul rather than a person, before this face enveloped in transparent veils, with life showing in the eyes, and in that life a melancholy realization of approaching death."

"Of all the men he had known in Italy till c. 1771, Goya spoke in his old age chiefly of the [French] painter David. For a short while they were in close intimacy."

"[how Goya's mind] grovelled in a hideous Inferno of its own a disgusting region, horrible without sublimity, shapeless as chaos, foul in colour and 'forlorn of light,' peopled by the vilest abortions that ever came from the brain of a sinner. He surrounded himself, I say, with these abominations, finding in them I know not what devilish satisfaction, and rejoicing, in a manner altogether incomprehensible to us, in the audacity of an art in perfect keeping with its revolting subjects. It is the sober truth to say that, in the whole series of these decorations for his house, Goya appears to have aimed at ugliness as Raphael aimed at beauty.. .Enough has been said to show that Goya had made himself a den of foulness and abomination, and dwelt therein, with satisfaction to his mind, like a hyena amidst carcasses."

"It is the work of a colourist of temperament who sees the tones of nature in all their richness, and who knows how to paint them in their true affinity. Never has a French artist placed in such harmonious relation the three national colours. Goya has thrown the hat with the tricoloured plumes on to a yellow table, against the tricoloured scarf of a person seated on a yellow chair, and clothed entirely in blue. These dissonances mingle in a brilliant concerto which sounds softly to the ear. We forget to notice that the head takes the aspect of a piece of red stained glass by reason of over-reflection. The colours live as if shown through transparent water, or touched by the capricious play of light."

"M. Manet has never seen any Goya's, M. Manet has never seen any El Greco's.. ..that may seem unbelievable to you, but it's the truth. I myself have been filled with wonder and stupefaction at these mysterious coincidences.. .He's heard so much about his 'pastiches' of Goya, that he is now trying to see some of Goya's paintings.. .Every time you try to pay Manet a service, I'll be grateful.. ..quote my letter or at least several lines of it. What I'm telling you is the naked truth."

"The first edition [of Los Capricos ] is usually said to have been issued in 1797, but this is an error based upon the discovery of a sketch for the title-page dated in that year. Isolated proofs were to be seen in 1796, but the whole work was not ready until 1798 or 1799. Goya was slowly printing the two hundred copies in an attic workroom he had specially engaged for the purpose at the corner of the Calle de San Bernardino, but for some while the job was completely set aside. He drew up a draft prospectus which was never published.. .This draft belonged to Valentin Carderera."

"if you are an angel go and flatter a person named Moreau, picture dealer, Rue Lafitte, Hotel Lafitte.. ..and try to obtain from this man permission to take a photograph of the [painting] 'Duchess of Alba' (absolutely Goya and absolutely authentic). The replicas (life-size) are in Spain, where Gautier has seen them. In one frame the Duchess is represented in national costume, in the other she is nude, in the same position, on her back. The triviality of the pose adds to the charm of the pictures. If I ever used your slang I might say that the Duchess is a bizarre woman with a wicked look.. .If you were a very wealthy angel I would advise you to buy these pictures, for the occasion will not repeat itself. Imagine a Bonington, or a gallant and ferocious Deveria. The man who owns them is asking 2,400 francs.. .He admitted to me that he bought them from Goya's son [Xavier Goya], who had become extraordinarily embarrassed."

"Queen Maria Luisa's attention to the deaf artist [Goya] was equally gracious, and far more delicate in its flattery. She gave [c. 1800] Goya a little painting by Velazquez, the only picture by another artist that we definitely know he possessed."

"During morning visits to his friends, he (Goya) would take the sandbox from the inkstand, and strewing the contents on the table, amuse them with caricatures traced in an instant by his ready finger. The great subject, repeated with ever new variations in these sand studies, was Godoy, to whom he cherished an especial antipathy, and whose face he was never weary of depicting with every ludicrous exaggeration of its peculiarities that quick wit and ill-will could supply."

"..never was there a less harmonious genius, never a Spanish artist more local [than Goya]."

"The artist worked at his lithographs [on stone!] on the easel, the stone placed like a canvas. He manipulated his crayons like brushes and never sharpened them. He remained standing, walking backwards and forwards every other minute to judge his effects. Usually he covered the whole stone with a uniform gray tone and then removed with a scraper those parts which were to appear light: here a head, a figure; there a horse, a bull. Next, the crayon was again employed to strengthen the shadows, the accents, or to indicate the figures and give them movement.."

"Goya is fine [in Bordaux]. He keeps busy with his sketches, he walks, eats, takes his siestas; it seems that right now peace reigns over his heart."

"..the artist [Goya] has worked for a long time and with the utmost care, taste, and intelligence on the numerous commissions he has been given; his artistic merit is so unsurpassable that other artists and the general public all extol his work."

"[Goya arrived] deaf, old, awkward and weak, and without knowing a word of French, [but] he was anxious and happy to see the world."

"At the moment I am trying to instill in Goya the requisite decorum, humility and devotion, together with a suitable respectable subject, simple yet appropriate composition and proper religious ideas.. ..the tender postures and virtuous expressions of the saints must move people to worship them and pray to them.. ..You know Goya, and [you] will realize the efforts I have had to make, to instill ideas into him which are so obviously against his grain. I gave him written instructions on how to paint the picture, and made him prepare three or four preliminary sketches. Now at least he is roughing out the full-size painting itself [309 x 177 cm], and I trust it will turn out as I want."

"Having to proceed against painters in accordance with rule 11 of the expurgation procedure, and given that Don Francisco de Goya is the author of two of the works [ 'La maja desnuda' and the 'La maja vestida' ].. ..one of them representing a naked woman on a bed.. ..and the other a women dressed as a 'maja' on a bed.. ..the said Goya [should] be ordered to appear before this tribunal so as to identify them and state whether they are his work, for what reasons he did them, at whose request and what intention guided him."

"[Goya is] in absolute penury [and wants] assistance [of public funds], to perpetuate with his brush the most notable and heroic actions or scenes of our glorious insurrection against the tyrant of Europe [= France]."

"[General] Palafox was insulted by the French and cruelly treated; they removed the surgeon who attended him, and placed a Frenchman in his place. In his room there were several drawings done by the celebrated Goya, who had gone from Madrid on purpose to see the ruins of Zaragoza; these drawings and one of the famous heroine, also by Goya, the French officers cut and destroyed with their sables at the moment too when Palafox was dying in his bed."

"[Goya sought to record] the hatred that he felt for the enemy; which, being his natural way of feeling, was increased on the [French] invasion of the kingdom of Aragón, his native land, whose immense horror he wished to perpetuate with his brushes."

"[that] the highly praised handsomeness of my little son had disappeared and in its place was a monstrosity completely covered with pox blisters. Can you imagine how I felt?"

"My position is entirely different from what the majority of the public imagine.. .I want a great deal, firstly because my position entails expenditure, and secondly because I like it. Being a very well-known man I cannot reduce my expenses as other people do. I was about to ask for an increase of salary, but the conditions are so unfavorable that I must set the idea aside."

"I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody."

"I haven't heard them [n.d.r. he's talking about some Spanish popular folk songs] and probably never shall because I no longer go to the places where one could hear them, for I have got into my head that I should maintain a certain presence and air for dignity.. ..that a man should have, and you can imagine that I'm not very happy about it."

"I have now established an enviable way of living, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me."

"I am now Painter to the King with fifteen thousand reales [a year].. ..the King sent out an order to Bayeu and Maella to search out the best two painters that could be found, to paint the cartoons for tapestries. Bayeu proposed his brother, and Maella proposed me. Their advice was put before the king, and the favor was done, and I had no idea of what was happening to me."

"Beloved soulmate.. ..you'll kiss my ass at least seven times if I manage to convince you from the crazy happiness I got from living here [Madrid].. ..the various insects with their deadly weapons, made of needles and penknives, which, if you don't look out and even if you do, will tear away your flesh and your hair as well.. ..and you can't find a spot far enough away from them to escape their cruelty. This infection is general in every town.."

"I have had luck with my St. Bernardino, not only with the experts, but with the public as well. Without any reservation, everyone is on my side. The King expressed his satisfaction before the whole Court."

"As I am working for the public, I must continue to amuse them."

"But now? well now, now I have no fear of Witches, goblins, ghosts, thugs, Giants, ghouls, scallywags, etc, nor any sort of body."

"I tell you that I have nothing more to wish for. They were extremely pleased with my pictures, and expressed great satisfaction not only the King, but the Prince as well. Neither I nor my works deserve such recognition."

"All sorts of ugly birds, soldiers, commoners and monks, fly around a lady who is half-hen; they all fall, and the woman hold them down by the wings, make them throw up and pull out their guts."

"His Majesty wishing to reward your distinguished merit and to give in person a testimony that may serve as a stimulus to all professors, of how much he appreciates your talent and knowledge of the noble art of painting, has been pleased to appoint you his chief painter of the Chamber, at a yearly salary of fifty thousand reals, which you will receive from this date free of rights, and also five ducats a year for a carriage. And it is also his pleasure that you occupy the house now inhabited by Don Mariano Maella, should he die first."

"The young woman left home as a little girl. She did her apprenticeship in Cádiz, and then came to Madrid where she had a stroke of good luck ('la cayó de lotería' / 'she won the lottery'). She went down to the paseo del Prado where she heard a dirty broken-down old women begging for alms. She sent the old woman away."

"Goya finds it absolutely impossible to paint, as a result of serious illness."

"The noises in his head and deafness aren't improving, yet his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance."

"The first prize for painting has been accorded to the canvas with the device Monies fregit aceto, by Monsieur Paul Borroni. The second prize for painting has been taken by Mr. Francois Goya, Roman, pupil of Mr. Bajeu, painter to the King of Spain. The Academy has noted in the second picture [of Goya] the beautiful management of the brush, and the depth of expression in the face of Hannibal, as well as the individuality and grandeur in the attitude of this general. If Mr. Goya had not been so slight in the composition of the subject, and if his coloring had been more truthful, he would have divided the votes for the first prize."

"Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure.. .I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before.. .I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina."

"letter to Joaquín Ferrer, 20 December 1825; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 393"