those of Rembrandt, while in their meaning and character they may be
likened to the work of Daumier. There are the peculiar qualities of
Goya’s etching, which recall the truth and naturalness of Fernando Boll,
the movement and life of Lievens and Konninck, and the expression and
charm of Von Vliet? These artists, whose best individual qualities are
all combined in Goya, were pupils of Rembrandt. ‘Only Hokusai,’ writes
Mr. Rothenstein, ‘was capable of such monstrous gaiety, such stinging
satire, and he alone could have lent probability to such monstrous
phantasy; Hogarth was too sermonising, Rowlandson too rollicking; a
certain diabolical side of his nature, which Goya allowed to be seen
both in the “Caprichos” and “The Disasters,” has probably prevented his
etchings gaining a footing in England.’ Certain it is that Goya’s prints
are rarely to be met with in this country--a fact that caused the writer
of this book to spare no effort in order to include in the
illustrations, reproductions of every etching and lithograph, as well as
of every portrait or picture of Goya’s, of which he could secure an
impression.
It is one thing to admire, even to understand, the technique of the
‘Caprichos,’ but to understand the precise significance of many of the
plates is almost impossible. Perhaps the titles printed by Goya beneath
the plates are the best guide to their meaning. The only reward to be
derived from reading ingenious meanings into the prints is the personal
interest one finds in the exercise. The series may be divided into three
classes; the first are humorous satires of the foolishness and
rottenness of the life of the period; the second are scathing assaults
upon the ignorance and greed of the priesthood and the corruptness of
the civic institutions; and the last are visions of witches and demons,
which may be classed as pure phantasies. There is a depth of meaning in
every plate, for Goya reproduces for us in them not only what he has
seen, but what he has felt. The first plate illustrates a marriage of
convenience, and we are shown the girl-bride being presented to her
hideous suitor by her more hideous mother. Over and over again we are
presented with this type of the ‘complaisant mother,’ which has been
described by Théophile Gautier in illuminating prose. ‘It is impossible’
he writes, ‘to fancy anything more grotesquely horrible, more viciously
deformed. Each of these frightful old shrews unites in her own person
the ugliness of the seven capital sins; compared to them the Prince of
Darkness himself is pretty. Just fancy whole ditches and counterscarps
of wrinkles; eyes like live coals that have been extinguished in blood;
noses like the neck of an alembic covered with warts and other
excrescences; nostrils like those of an hippopotamus rendered formidable
by stiff bristles; whiskers like a tiger’s; a mouth like the slit in the
top of a money-box, contracted by a horrible and convulsive grin; a
something between the spider and the multiped which makes you feel the
same kind of disgust as if you had placed your foot upon the belly of a
toad.’ The description is horrible even as Goya’s engravings are
horrible, and as excellently true as the work by which it was inspired.
It is not possible in the space at our command to review these
‘Caprichos’ in detail, and fortunately it is not necessary. The reader
can examine the plates for himself and study their details. He will
remark the skill with which the engraver endows ‘The Garroted Man’ with
its sombre, gruesome tone; the sense of the unavailing, despairing
effort with which the living skeleton in ‘And yet they do not go’ (Plate
369) supports the slab of stone which must inevitably fall and crush the
crouching, scarcely human wretches who anticipate their fate with
expressions of such lurid horror. One can feel the violence of the wind
that buffets the women in ‘A Bad Night’; we enter into the terror of the
woman who is employed in her hideous task in ‘Tooth Hunting.’ Here
indeed, ‘horror confronts us; corruptness is imagined with an
unapproachable depth of grotesqueness.’ In all the realm of art there is
nothing to compare with the horror and grotesquerie of these Caprices.
Goya’s next work was the thirty-three plates of ‘The Tauromachia.’ This
series of engravings was so brilliant in execution and appealed so
strongly in their theme and treatment to the Spanish national affection
for the bull-ring, that doubtless they would have brought the etcher
even greater contemporary fame than the larger series, but for some
unexplained reason, they were not publicly issued until after his death
and the death of his only surviving legitimate son. In the ‘Tauromachia’
Goya made less use of aquatint and aquafortis, and, as in his later
etchings, relied more and more upon the needle to produce his effects.
These scenes of the bull-ring represent the different phases of the
combat and the surpassing feats of its most famous exponents. The
‘Caprices’ may appeal more strongly in some respects, but the drawing in
the plates of the ‘Tauromachia’ is extremely light and facile, and the
illusion of vigorous movement is seen in them all.
In 1803 Goya was fifty-seven years old. The corruption in high places,
against which he had hurled his darts, was fast driving Spain into the
grasp of the world-power which was menacing all Europe. Napoleon’s
ambitious designs embraced the mastership of the Peninsula, and he was
already maturing his plans to that end. In 1803 the English and French
were again at war. Napoleon demanded, under the treaty of St. Ildefonso,
that Spain should declare war against England. Godoy strove fiercely to
resist the will of the tyrant. Napoleon ordered the dismissal of Godoy.
Spain purchased her neutrality in hard cash, and Godoy was retained. In
1804 Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor, and the neutrality of the
Spaniards was reduced to such a farce beneath the grinding importunities
of the imperial ally that Pitt declared war against Spain in December of
that year. The battle of Trafalgar was fought on October 21, 1805, but
before the end of the year Napoleon had entered Vienna and won the
battle of Austerlitz. Before the awful menace of his growing power,
Godoy sued for the favour of the conqueror in gold drawn from the
Spanish funds. The Emperor accepted the money without relaxing his
animus against the despised favourite, who was forced to approach
England with proposals for an anti-French coalition. His overtures were
ignored. The Queen and the King heaped new honours upon the Prince of
the Peace, but his end and that of his august patrons was near.
Ferdinand’s party was working the country into a ferment of hatred
against Godoy, and Napoleon’s inflexible aversion sealed his doom. In
1807 Ferdinand truckled to the ‘Scourge of Europe’ by asking for a lady
of Napoleon’s family for a wife, while Godoy urged upon Napoleon the
occupation of Portugal as a preliminary to the introduction of French
troops into Spain. In October 1807 Portugal proving refractory, Junot
and a strong force encamped on Spanish soil and were made welcome by the
Prince of the Asturias and the Prince of the Peace, both of whom
regarded the invasion of the French as a friendly move, in support of
their respective interests.
In the same month the Court was stricken by the exposure of the plot and
counterplot planned by the rascally favourite and the intriguing Crown
Prince. Godoy was charged by Ferdinand with the intention of killing the
King and his family and seizing the throne; Ferdinand was surprised in a
plot which embraced the imprisonment if not the death of his father. The
Prince of the Asturias was placed under arrest, and the King applied to
Napoleon for his advice. Junot marched into Portugal; French troops
poured into Spain; the Portuguese Regent, at the advice of Lord
Strangford, transferred his court to Brazil. On March 17, 1808, the
troops, in favour of Ferdinand, prevented Godoy from leaving Aranguez,
and two days later threw him, bruised and bleeding, at the feet of the
Prince of the Asturias, who gave his father to understand that, by
virtue of the presence in the capital of his friends the French, he was
absolute master of the situation. Charles IV. signed a decree which made
Ferdinand VII. sovereign of Spain. A few days later he put his name to a
private withdrawal of his abdication; and this document was forwarded to
Napoleon, with a letter offering to conform to whatever the Emperor
might order with regard to him, his queen, and the Prince of the Peace.
Napoleon came south towards Spain. Ferdinand, who hastened north to meet
him, entered Bayonne to find himself a prisoner. Charles IV., with
Maria Luisa and Godoy, followed to Bayonne, and Ferdinand was compelled
to restore the crown to his father, who transferred it to Napoleon. The
cash consideration the King was to receive for his sovereignty was never
paid.
While these base traffickings were occupying the King and his family,
the gallant loyalists of Madrid had risen against the French and
suffered massacre on the terrible Dos de Mayo. Once again the country
was in arms; the Spaniards fought--to instance only the sieges of
Zaragoza and Valencia--with superb valour, but the Junta continued its
servile negotiations with Napoleon, and Joseph Buonaparte, King of
Naples, was summoned by his brother to rule over Spain. On July 9, 1808,
Joseph I. set foot in his new kingdom. On the 17th the French were
defeated in the battle of Baileu, and the victorious Spanish troops
advanced over the Sierra Morena to Madrid. The new king fled the
capital. Napoleon in person took command of the army which was to
reconquer Spain, and advanced into the heart of Castile. The left
division of the Spanish army was defeated on November 11, the right was
driven into the mountains of Aragon, the centre was completely crushed
at Tudela on November 26. A fortnight later the Emperor entered Madrid,
and Joseph I. was restored to the throne of Spain.
Goya’s position was rendered acutely difficult by these drastic changes.
The first painter of the exiled King, the favourite of his dispersed
courtiers, what could he do in the court of the hated Joseph Buonaparte?
It may be surmised that ‘the good old Goya,’ as Gautier familiarly
styles him, hated the new order of things, but he was no visionary
patriot burning with the fire of useless sacrifice. His love of country
was not love of Charles IV. or his son; he loved Spain not less because
Maria Luisa and Godoy were out of it. And as he asked himself what
action he should take, he saw the Prince of the Asturias submit himself
to the new ruler, and with him Jove-Llanos, Mazarrado and Urquijo, the
Dukes of Fernan Nuñez and del Parque, the Count of Santa Colonna, the
Cardinal of Bourbon--to mention a few only among the nobles. Goya’s
comrades also, the Court painters, Mariano Maëlla, Francisco Ramos, and
Pablo Racio, acknowledged the ‘intrusive king’! Goya hesitated no
longer. He took the oath of allegiance to Joseph I. He was made a knight
of the Legion of Honour. He painted the usurper’s portrait, and some
time later accepted, with Napoli and Maëlla, the commission to select
from the treasures of the royal gallery fifty of the most beautiful
pictures which were to be sent to the Louvre.
But though the old order had changed and Goya had changed with it, his
spirit was full of bitterness. He had witnessed the butchery and
slaughter of the French soldiers; he hated the sound of the clanking of
the spurs of Murat’s hussars on the pavements of Madrid.
Already he had painted two pictures, the ‘Dos de Mayo’ and ‘Un Episodio
de la Invasión Francesca.’ One has only to study these two pictures of
realised terror, in the Prado, to understand the painter’s hatred of the
French and the brooding melancholy which the events of the rising in
Madrid had fastened upon his soul and darkened his life. De Amicis, the
Italian author, writes, with a fine appreciation of the stirring realism
of these works: ‘Nothing more tremendous can be imagined: one can give
no more execrable form to power, nor frightful aspect to desperation,
nor a more ferocious expression to the fury of a fray. In the first one
there is a dark sky, the light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a pile of
bodies, a crowd of men condemned to death, and a line of French
soldiers in the act of firing; in the other are horses with their veins
cut, and horsemen dragged from their saddles, stabbed, trodden upon, and
lacerated. What faces! What attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and
see the blood running: the veritable scene could not cause more horror.
Goya must have painted these pictures with his eyes glaring, foam at his
mouth, and with the fury of a demoniac; it is the last point which
painting can reach before being translated into action; having passed
that point one throws away the brush and seizes the dagger; one must
commit murder in order to do anything more terrible than those pictures;
after those colours, comes blood.’
Goya retired to the seclusion of his house outside the gates of the
capital, only opening his doors to a few old friends, among whom were
Cean Bermudez the art critic, Carnicero the illustrator of _Don
Quixote_, Castillo the painter, and Selma the engraver. The old painter
had become completely deaf, and, in these dark days of change and
violence, the bitterness of his spirit found further expression in the
‘Desastres de la Guerra’--‘the cry of a just soul against the iniquity
of warfare.’ With passionate vigour he depicted the horrors of the
French invasion and lashed with his satire the barbarities of the
conquerors. The new series was begun in the year 1810. They reproduce
all the sad and abominable events which had culminated in the accession
of Joseph Bonaparte. Callot, in his scenes of the barbarities of the
Thirty Years’ War, did not attain the fire, the power, or the purpose of
these plates. All the horrors of warfare and its heroism and the
stupidity of war are depicted here with searching truth. The technique
of the plates is unsurpassed. We see starving men made bestial with
terror, dead bodies stripped and mutilated, women outraged, and children
butchered before the eyes of their frenzied mothers. And again we are
shown the superb heroism of the women who, armed only with hatchets and
stones, withstood the onslaught of the dragoons; we are made to realise
the intrepid loyalty of those men and women who fought side by side on
the terrible Dos de Mayo; we witness the masculine daring of the women
who took the match from the hands of the dead artillerymen and continued
to work the guns. Every phase of warfare, its famine and desolation, its
hunger and disease, its heroism and its savagery, are depicted in this
impeachment of Militarism. The utter uselessness of war is emphasised
in the haunting echo which runs through all the plates--‘To what end?’
The wasteful sacrifice of human lives is forced upon Goya’s audience by
an engraving in this series inscribed with the word ‘Nada’
(Nothingness). Gautier in his rare volume, _Travels in Spain_ (so rare
that I need make no apology for again quoting from it), writes of this
plate: ‘Among these drawings which admit of an easy explanation, there
is one fearfully terrible and mysterious, the meaning of which, that we
can dimly understand, fills you with horror and affright. It is a
corpse, half-buried in the earth; it is supporting itself on its elbow,
and, without looking at what it is writing, traces with its bony hand,
on a paper placed near it, one word--“Nothingness”--which is alone worth
the most terrible things Dante ever penned. Around its head, on which
there is just enough flesh left to render it more frightful than a mere
skull, flit, scarcely visible in the darkness of the night, a number of
monstrous spectres, lighted up here and there by flashes of vivid
lightning. A fatidical hand holds a pair of scales, which are in the act
of turning upside down. Can you conceive anything more sinister or more
heartrending?’
The ‘Disasters’ were not published in a series until 1863, when the
Academy of San Fernando acquired eighty plates and issued the engravings
with a brief introductory note. In this introduction the writer says:
‘The collection which Goya designated by the name of _Ravages_ or
_Disasters of War_, is indisputably one of the most notable of the kind
that he produced. In it is all the strength of his lively imagination,
exalted and excited by a deep patriotic feeling in those terrible
moments when an unjust foreign invasion essayed to humiliate the pride
and hauteur which are a characteristic of the Spaniard. What matter for
surprise then that a Spaniard, an Aragonese, a man with the stern
independent character of Goya, should allow himself to be carried away
very often by exaggeration and caricature?... On the other hand, this
work breathes novelty in the subjects, originality in the types, fire in
the composition, boldness and firmness in the colouring, decision and
even fineness in the design.... In order that nothing shall be lacking
in this collection, there is given on each plate the inscriptions which
afford another proof of the artist’s genius. These inscriptions,
concise, incisive, and piquant, add character, if that be possible, to
what the pencil had already accomplished; the brief phrases, at times a
single word, reveal by their sense of rapidity the fugitive idea which
his mind had conceived in a moment, and which, in little more than
another moment, his hand had represented.’
A very interesting series of drawings and etchings are preserved in the
Print Room of the British Museum. Of these ten are reproduced in this
book for the first time. The Goya collection in the Museum consists of
eight original drawings, a holograph letter of Goya and no fewer than
two hundred and eighty-one separate works, comprising etchings and
lithographs of the Proverbs, Caprices, Tauromachia, and Disasters of
War, and the subjects after Velazquez. They are all in a splendid state
of preservation. Of the selection made for the present volume (Nos.
601-12), the portrait of the Duke of Wellington (601) and ‘A Lost Soul’
(605), have been reproduced by Mr. Rothenstein. The sketch of the Duke,
whom Goya in the letter referred to, writes ‘Weelingthon,’ served the
painter in executing the large portrait. It was made on the day
following the battle of Salamanca (1812), when Marmont was defeated on
the field of Arapiles. The ‘Lady and Gentleman on Horseback’ (No. 602)
have not been identified, although the picture is evidently a portrait.
The head of Fray Juan Fernanez (No. 603), drawn at the moment of his
last breath, is a very powerful sketch. In No. 609 the artist depicts
misery in a few masterly touches, and in Nos. 607, 608, and 609 he
illustrates proverbs with his peculiar freakish fancy. The study of
bulls (610) is another spirited sketch. The remaining plates represent
scenes of the bull-ring.
Goya still brooded over the misfortunes which the Royal family and their
hated favourite between them had brought about by folly, ignorance, and
baseness; and over the sufferers, the common people, who still
sacrificed their lives to reinstate their corrupt but accustomed
oppressors. But the end was near. The leading patriots, assembled at
Cadiz, were engaged in framing a constitution which was to mark the
commencement of modern Spain. Meanwhile Wellington was driving the
French troops before him--Olivenza, Fuentes de Oñoro, Almeida, Albuera,
Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz indicate the line of their retreat. The
country was being drained and devastated to provide money for continuing
the war. Joseph was providing bull-fights and shows to divert the mind
of the Madrileños from the national misery. Napoleon was overwhelming
his brother with blame for a state of affairs which was neither of his
making nor controlling. Madrid, cut off from supplies, was wasted by an
appalling visitation of famine which lasted from September 1811 to
August 1812, when Wellington’s liberating army reached the capital to
find that Joseph had already beaten a retreat. The Napoleonic rule was
over. Joseph returned to Madrid, but it was only to pack up his
belongings, to loot churches and palaces and retire with the plunder to
France. On June 21, 1813, Wellington met the retiring intruders at
Vittoria, and Joseph, with a greatly diminished burden of treasure,
barely escaped with his life. Thereafter Napoleon abandoned his schemes
of Spanish conquest; Ferdinand, the prisoner of Valençay,--who had
danced in captivity while his country bled, who still sought a marital
alliance with the house of Buonaparte, who had slobbered his
felicitations on the birth of the King of Rome and congratulated the
Emperor upon his victory over the Spaniards--Ferdinand was now free to
receive the welcome which his loyal countrymen were eager to give him.
Ferdinand ‘the desired,’ after swearing to respect the new constitution,
re-entered Spain in March 1814 amidst an incredible outburst of popular
enthusiasm. Two days before he reached Madrid every member of the Cortes
and every known friend of the constitution was thrown into prison. By
the publication of the decree of Valencia he proclaimed himself an
autocrat, by his acts he proved himself a tyrant. He re-established the
Inquisition, he decreed the ancient taxes; the country, desolated by war
waged on his behalf, was thrown into lamentable disorder by the greed of
the coarse and ignorant bloodsuckers whom the King gathered around him.
Charles IV. was a paternal sovereign, and Joseph I. was an enlightened
ruler beside Ferdinand VII. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives were
safe. He imprisoned the men who had striven and bled to effect his
return; he persecuted without mercy those who had sworn allegiance to
Joseph. Goya was one of the first and fiercest, according to Lafond, to
acclaim the return of the King. For a time he sought refuge from his
sovereign in the house of his friend José Duaso y Latre, who kept him in
hiding for three months. At the expiration of that time he found that
Ferdinand was inclined to condone his defection. It is reported that he
pardoned him with the words, ‘In our absence you have deserved exile,
nay worse, you have merited death; but you are a great artist, and we
will forget everything.’
So ‘the good old Goya’ was reinstated as Court painter, and he executed
several portraits of the new sovereign. It is evident from these
likenesses that the painter recognised the weakness and worthlessness of
Ferdinand. He viewed his sitter in the same clear, critical,
uncompromising spirit with which he had gazed on his royal parents; he
painted the weak, shifty, uncultured despot as he was. The equestrian
portrait of Ferdinand VII. is commonplace. His portrait of the monarch
in his gorgeous mantle is almost a caricature of royalty, and in his
other likenesses he betrays his antipathy to the restored Bourbon. That
Goya’s palette still emitted ‘rays of prodigious art’ when he painted
people who were congenial to him, is shown by many of the portraits of
this period; for instance, by that of the Marquis de San Adrián, of Don
Ignacio Garcini and his wife, of Don Evaristo Pérez de Castro, and by
the beautiful study of Goya’s little niece, La Felicianæ, which is one
of the tenderest and most delicate of all his portraits.
Another royal commission entrusted to Goya was to paint episodes of the
war, especially of the siege of Zaragoza. Accompanied by his pupil Luis
Gil Ranz, he set out to obtain studies. Owing to the exaltation of the
populace the journey is said to have abounded in incidents and perils.
The language of signs which Ranz employed in conversing with his deaf
master caused them to be mistaken for spies. They were forced to seek
sanctuary at Renales, the pupil’s native town, where they waited until a
favourable opportunity offered for their return to Madrid.