Patrick Bade
Goya, Part 1

Patrick Bade | Goya, Part 1 | 06.15.21

- Oh, I’m so looking forward to this lecture. Morning, Patrick!

• Hi, Wendy.

• So Goya today, fantastic! Thank you, so I’m going to just say thanks for joining us. Thanks for being with us again, and over to you.

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

• Thanks, Wendy.

Well, I think anybody coming to the two images you see on the screen for the first time would be very unlikely to assume that they were by the same artist. They’re so different. They seem to come from different worlds. I think you can say they do come from different worlds, because the painting on the left was painted in 1785 and the one on the right was painted in 1814. And the world had radically, drastically changed in that quarter century. 1785, you’re still in the, what French called the Ancien Regime with these very fixed hierarchies and institutions of the monarchy, the aristocracy, the Catholic church that had been in place since the Middle Ages. They were on increasingly shaky ground, but probably not many people had much idea of this or what was about to happen.

Now, I think part of the fascination of Goya is not just that he’s such a fantastic painter. He is a fantastic painter. He’s right up there with the big guys. He’s up there with Rembrandt and Velazquez and Vermeer and all the really, really great painters. Part of fascination is the interesting times through which he lived and his very profound and insightful reaction to the events of his life. This is a scary picture, also a ludicrous one I think. It dates from 1788, so this is the year before the French Revolution unleashes everything. And it’s clearly a commissioned picture. I don’t think this is something that Goya painted because he wanted to. It shows the Spanish Saint, San Francisco Borja, who’s a member of the notorious Borja family that produced the Renaissance Pope Alexander VI.

And so Francisco Borja was the head of the Jesuits, and in this picture, he is exercising an impenitent dying man who refuses to acknowledge Jesus as his saviour. So he waves this crucifix with a figure of Jesus on it, and the figure of Jesus comes to life. And it rips opens its wounds, and it sprays gory blood on the victim. Now, I don’t know what you think about this picture. I mean, to me it looks Monty Python-esque. I cannot believe that Goya was taking this very seriously. Looks to me like he’s completely taking the piss. And Goya was certainly somebody who was aware of the very dark side of the Catholic Church. God, we heard enough about that yesterday from Trudy, the unbelievable story of Pastor 12th and the church during Second World War. So this is the public face of Goya, of course, in the 1780s, what he’s commissioned to do.

These drawings he’s done from the heart. This is the private Goya. And the one on the left, drawing on the left, it’s a pen and ink drawing. The title at the bottom is Condemned by the Inquisition and the extremely poignant drawing on the right, which belongs to the British Museum in London, the inscription’s Spanish underneath. It shows a victim of the Inquisition and the inscription says, because he was of Jewish heritage. So this, I think these are powerful, indignant drawings that show what Goya really felt.

So I want to try and start off by putting him in historical context, ‘cause he’s such a freaky artist. You know that when the famous show of modern art in New York in 1912, the Armoury Show, he was included as an honorary modern artist. He’s so timeless. He really seems like a modern artist or seems so in the 20th century. So he’s born in 1746. See here, this is a self-portraits, it’s fairly young man. And here we, I’m comparing him with Fragonard, because a lot of the early work, the tapestry designs really have quite a lot in common with Fragonard. They’re, you know, kind of… Fragonard is the ultimate example of the frothy, decorative late Rococo style. Very, very Ancien Regime. So Fragonard was born at 1732, so he’s what, six? No, 14, my math is terrible. Anyway, he’s half a generation older than Goya. Then this is his nearest important contemporary.

This is Jacques-Louis David, who’s born in 1748. So he’s two years younger than Goya. And he is of course the high priest of the Neoclassical hard edge, smooth Neoclassical style, which was a pendulum swing against the Baroque and the Rococo. And here is an artist that it’s, I mean, well, next week I will get up to his late work where he’s so ahead of his time in the early 19th century. And he seems like a full-blown romantic, looking very frowning, very Beethoven here on the left hand side.

This is Goya’s self portrait. And I’m comparing him with the great French Romantic painter, Delacroix. And you can make very direct comparisons between their work around about 1820. But actually, Delacroix is 46 years younger than Goya. Yet the Spain was quite open to foreign artists, particularly artists from Italy. And two very different artists who were quite dominant in Spain when Goya was forming as an artist. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who’s the last gasp, you could say, of the great great Italian Baroque style. This is the exorcism of Saint Francis on left hand side. And Anton Raphael Mengs, who is perhaps the first painter, he’s the pioneer of the new Neoclassical style that, as I said, was to reach its apogee with David.

So and utterly different artists, but they both arrive in Spain in the year 1761. And in their different ways, both have an effect on the young Goya. I think in terms of technique and style, it was certainly, Tiepolo had a much more profound influence on Goya. This flickering nervous handling of the paint, a very fluid painterly quality. But there was… And one thinks of Goya as the least classical of artists, as basically a profoundly anti-classical artist. But he had his moments of being interested in classical art. And certainly briefly at the beginning of his career in the early 1770s, he painted pictures like these.

Again, you probably wouldn’t recognise them as by Goya if you didn’t know, but they’re of classical subjects, Sacrifice to Pan and the Sacrifice to Vesta. These both date from 1771. And they’re in a kind of soft focus, what I like to call soft core Neoclassical style that still has in the sweetness, the rather pallette colours, the sweet colours, and the relative softness of technique that there’s a leftover of Rococo in this early classical style. But it becomes a very popular international style. I mean, we’ve got Swiss artist here, Angelica Kauffman, top left, the Goya in the middle, and Reynolds doubling in early classicism with this portrait of lady Sarah Bunbury; all in, I mean, these are three artists who are very unlikely at this point, anyway, knew each other’s work.

But they’re all working in this kind of international, early Neoclassical start. Goya was not of . He was a slow developer. He applied as a student to the Royal Academy in Madrid and was rejected. But he got a leg up from an artist who later became his brother-in-law called Francisco Bayeu. Francisco Bayeu working in a style, I suppose, quite similar to Mengs, quite smooth, quite linear. And he certainly, he was much more famous than Goya, much more successful at this point. And he helped Goya get a foothold probably for family reasons. On the right is a self-portrait of Bayeu and on the left is a copy that Goya made. I wonder why, maybe as some kind of learning exercise. I’m going to show you some details. We’ll get a bit closer.

How about this? And you can see it already, there’s certainly a difference in technique that the, as I said, the Bayeu is smoother, more linear, you know, more blended paint surface. And although very restrained, already, we can see Goya’s tendency towards a more painterly technique. Now, I suppose his main big break came in 1775. Apparently, it was with the help of Mengs, Anton Raphael Mengs. And he was recommended to produce cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory. And this was a very nice earner for him from 1775 right through to 1792.

And he made a great many of these cartoon. A cartoon is just a large scale preparatory design for a tapestry, but these were made in oil and canvas. And initially, apparently the workers in the tapestry factory were completely nonplus. And I can understand that. It must have been very, quite a challenge for the craftsmen to translate this extremely painterly style with rather flickering brush work and flickering, unstable light into the medium of the tapestry. This is one of the most famous of them. And so, these are very, to us that term again, Ancien Regime, hedonistic, you know, think of Madame de Pompadour saying . You know, we’re going to have a good time, they can pay for it later. So these are beautiful people having a very good time.

Goya on the left and a very similar subject, a little bit more sweet and Rococo by Fragonard on the right hand side. And so, they were intended to show aspects of Spanish life, not all happy and jolly ones. The one on the right hand side actually reflected a law that was brought in by King Charles III, who was, at least momentarily, interested in the ideas of The Enlightenment. And he wanted to introduce laws to help the working classes, and so on. And he introduced a law to protect workers on building sites that was promptly repealed by his conservative follower, Charles IV. So there are two versions of this subject as a tapestry. One which shows a wounded worker being rescued and the other one has a bottle. This one clearly doesn’t.

This is the original design that’s showing him as drunken worker. Of course there’s always Velazquez in the background. And we’ve got details here of a self portrait by Goya on the left and a self-portrait by Velazquez on the right. So the Velazquez were always there for Goya to look at and learn from. And both of these paintings are wonderful examples of what Degas described as the delicate muddiness of Spanish painting, slightly unfocused, wet into wet painting. Everything having this wonderful softness.

And so, Goya was certainly very frank and open in his admiration of Velazquez. These are etchings he made after Velazquez’ paintings, Count Olivares on the right hand side. And so as well as working on these tapestry cartoons in the 1780s, he was building up a very successful career as a painter of fashionable aristocratic portraits. This is the Count and Countess of Altamira. They date from 1787. The palette of colours, you know, especially this lovely pale pink, slightly silvery pale blue, and so on, is a very Rococo palette. They have a slight stiffness, a slight naivety that actually reminds me very much of the early work of Gainsborough, which Goya couldn’t possibly have known at this stage.

But Gainsborough, another artist who’s an older contemporary, he’s 19 years older than Goya. And this I find a very interesting comparison. ‘Cause these two paintings date from exactly the same year, 1785. And what you see from this is how internationalised fashion had become. This is Lady Sheffield by Gainsborough on the left hand side and the Duchess of Benavente by Goya on the right hand side. Still, I would say more like Gainsborough’s rather earlier style, the suffix style, or the early bath style, a little bit tighter, not as flashy and painterly as Gainsborough is. But just to make the dresses, you can see how, I mean, how similar they are, the large bow on the bust and the big hat with all the feathers and frou-frou, and so on. There’s certainly a big English influence.

I mean, the 18th century saw the rise of Britain to world par. We were triumphant in, apart from the war of the American of Independence, which was a worldwide war, of course. That was the only major loss for Britain in the 18th century. All our big wars were of Spanish succession, Seven Years War, and so on. They were British successes by the late 18th century. Britain was probably the most powerful nation in the world. And whereas previously, you know, the Brits have very often looked to continental Europe for their cultural inspiration, particularly to France. The British dominance in the late 18th century meant that there was a flow of ideas and style from Britain to European countries.

And both these portraits by Goya, the Marquis of San Adrian, which is 1804, and Marquis of Villafranca, Duke of Alba, it’s a bit earlier, 1795. To me, they have a very English look to them in this attempt to convey a sort of relaxed, aristocratic nonchalance. And that comes across particularly in the poses. And this kind of pose where you have the legs crossed like this, very, very popular in English painting of the mid to late 18th century. Here is an example. This is, again, spread. It’s meant to be a pose that’s supposed to show how cool you are. Now, ooh, this lady. I want to have lunch with this lady. This is actually The Marquis of Villafranca’s mother. And I just, oh wow, what a woman. You know, what a face so full of intelligence and character and mischief. I bet she was a really naughty lady. Look at that face. God, she would be fun to have lunch with.

He was also beginning to attract royal patronage. And he painted royal portraits over a period of more than 20 years, over three monarchs. First of which was Charles III, and this date’s from 1786. And you can see he’s taken his cue from Velazquez’ portrait of Philip IV of Spain, dating from 1630s. The fact that the dog, the hunting dog has curled up and gone to sleep, I’m not sure if that is some kind of quirky, humorous comment from Goya on the character of Charles III. He was no great beauty as you can see that he probably couldn’t really make him look very glamorous.

But here he’s on the right hand side in a much slicker portrait. Look at that wonderful sash of red silk or satin, like a plumage of a bird. That’s by Anton Raphael Mengs. But the most interesting royal portraits were made for the king’s brother. And this is at the infante. He was infante because he was actually with the king. You know, they were producing all these children. They kept on dying. So for a while, he was the infante, ‘cause he was the heir to the throne of the king’s brother. And he was actually, he was a cardinal, an archbishop of Toledo. But he was a very naughty man. He was very, very debauched and producing dozens of illegitimate children all over the place.

And even though the 18th century is sort of famous for its rather lax morals, particularly within the Catholic church, this really got to be too much and rather a scandal. So when he was middle-aged, the king forced him to renounce his vocation as a cardinal and an archbishop and to get married. But he also insisted that it should be a morganatic marriage, which meant that any children he produced would not be a threat to the children of the king. And so here he was, a late or even elderly man marrying a very young girl called Maria Theresa, who you see on the right hand side. And he was sort of banished to the provinces. He lived in a country house or palace in the provinces. And he had his own little court, which for a while included the composer Boccherini, who might be one of the figures in this picture. I’ll come to that in a minute.

And Goya spent a couple of summers at this country house and painted several portraits of different members of the family. And this incredible picture, when they had that big Goya portraits show at the National Gallery, it must be about five or six years ago. Ugh, this was in a kind of room by itself. And it’s just a bomb of a picture. I mean, I hope you think it’s wonderful even in this image on the screen. But you really have to see the original, which I think is in Parma in Italy. Amazing, amazing portrait. And you can see the rather doddery and elderly infante left of centre in profile, and his young wife having her hair done, giving us a rather knowing look.

And there is Goya himself still looking very young, working on the canvas presumably that we’re looking at on the left hand side of the picture. This is possibly, yeah, I think it’s slightly better in terms of colour and tone as a reproduction of this absolutely amazing picture. Well of course, an obvious inspiration for it was the Velazquez Meninas. The idea of the artist showing himself in the picture, working on the large scale canvas that we are actually looking at. And it’s the young wife who really is the focal centre of the picture as the little princess is in Las Meninas. An interesting suggestion that… Because a big, a striking feature of this picture is the nocturnal lighting, the artificial light.

And so, although Goya never came to Britain, there was a big trade in Prince. And he was certainly quite aware of a lot of British art through Prince. And this on the left hand side, this is a Mezzotint. It’s a kind of tonal print made on a sheet of metal. And you can get very, very subtle tonal variations. And this was a print that was widely circulated in continental Europe. And there’s a suggestion, which I think is a believable one, that Goya might have seen this and been influenced by it. And look at this wonderful lineup of faces and characters, all so strikingly and individually characterised. You could write a novel, really, about every one of these characters, so vividly characters, slightly, you know, the suspicious, gloomy guy on the right hand side.

This is rather lush, young man smiling at us and a very sensitive man. This might be Boccherini that the man in profile here again is another reproduction. I don’t know what, I mean, it’s not proven, it’s just speculation. This is a portrait of the great Italian composer and cellist Luigi Boccherini by Pompeo Batoni, the insert on the left hand side. Could that be the same man? Could that be the same nose, same chin? I think it could be as the thoughtful man in profile in this picture. And here, as I said, the slightly wary looking young wife and the little girl, the oldest little girl who’s also called Maria Theresa.

Goya is, I’m going to come back to this, how wonderful Goya is in painting children. The 18th century, this is something I’ve discussed in several lectures before with you, is the age in a way that children, the notion of childhood, the state of childhood is really discovered in the 18th century, the endless portraits of children; far more portraits of children in the 18th century than ever before. And they can be very icky and very sentimental. But this is, she’s a live little girl. She seems an intelligent girl, and she is very curious about what Goya is doing. She’s coming over to have a look at what he’s doing. And the little boy in profile was her brother and Goya, he kept in contact with this family.

So here is the little boy in a separate portrait made at the time, again, looking a little bit Gainsborough, a boy in blue, but more tightly painted. And then as a cardinal later in life, looking rather miserable. And here is the little girl painted at the same time as the family picture, and then as a young woman when she was married off to the notorious Prince Godoy, who was… I mean, she seems to have been really in love with him. And he was obviously hot shit as a lover, 'cause he was the lover, they say, of the king and the queen.

Now the Duchess of Alba, there are these two very famous portraits of the Duchess of Alba dating from the 1790s. First one, 1794 on the left in white dress, and second one in the black dress in 1797. She was in her mid-thirties when these were painted and newly widowed and a famously beautiful and feisty woman. And it seems extraordinary that this… And she was, of course, one of the probably richest, most powerful women in Spain, you know, the Duke or Duchess of Alba. That’s, you know, right next to the monarch in Spain. And she seems to have had a very torrid, passionate love affair with Goya, who was middle-aged by this time, he’s 50. I suppose that was old in the 18th century. An artist who’d actually recently suffered a terrible illness that left him more or less stone deaf. So there must have been something…

Well, it speaks well of her to me, that she put aside, she was prepared to take the risk of having an artist as a lover. And the two pa- There’s no secret about it. I mean, the paintings are really, I think, quite explicit. Oh, here are two more pictures of the Duchess of Alba as a pen and ink drawing for apparently having a hissy fit. And on the right hand side, she is tormenting her very pious, elderly ladies maid. And so, this, as I said, the portraits make no secret of the relationship between the two.

You can see that in the second portrait, she’s imperiously pointing down towards the floor. And you can see that his name is inscribed in the sand at her feet. And if we look at her hand, you can see she’s wearing two rings. One ring says Alba and the other ring says Goya. And it could hardly be more of a declaration of love between the Duchess and Goya. And here again, in the other portrait, you can see he’s put her name next to his, the date he’s written is 1795, again, inscribed into the soil at her feet. And I can’t help thinking of this, of course, this is a generation later, 1817.

This is John Constable who liked to sign pictures in this way. But here for him, it was a declaration of love for nature and the particular landscape of his childhood of the east . So we get to 1798, and he gets his most important commission for a series of frescos in the church of San Antonio de la Florida, which at the time, was on the edge of Madrid. And it’s a church that’s dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua. St. Anthony of Padua was actually originally from Lisbon. If I hadn’t long since lost my Catholic or rejected my Catholic faith, I’d be praying to him all the time. 'Cause he is the patron saint of people who lose things, and I’m really terrible for losing things.

He was also a patron saint for young girls who needed a husband. You could go and ask him for a husband, and of course, he’d get one for you. And so this is a church, which is of course, now it’s really practically a Goya museum. He’s actually buried in the church, or at least most of him is. His head went missing in France. So when his body was brought back from Bordeaux, it was only the headless body. It’s now in a tomb in this church. So in this, you can see him, it’s 1798.

So in France and elsewhere in Europe, the Neoclassical style is really at its height, nothing at all Neoclassical about this. You could say it look… This is a a scheme that really looks backwards with its effect, very steep what the Italian school DeSoto Ensu perspective. You’re looking up at these figures, very steeply for shortened. And also the kind of illusionism of the Baroque with the, you know, the little boy climbing on the rail. So it looks, see if we can get some details here. It’s fresco, very demanding technique where you’re painting freely and quickly into the wet plaster. And you can see the cracking of the plaster on the right hand side.

Again, this very steep perspective from below and lit from below as well, which is quite interesting. The same year that he painted that, he embarked on… 'Cause he’d be making prints all the way through his career. But his first really great series of prints are the Caprichos dating from 1798. Now there’s a, I think, a big change in Goya’s work that happens in the 1790s. And one factor is a very serious illness that he had in 1793 that nearly killed him. And I often think, oh, well, if Goya had died in 1793, how would we judge him? I would certainly wouldn’t be doing this talk over two lectures if he died in 1793. And he might even have to share a lecture with somebody else.

You know, he was a very delightful artist, I would say, slightly of the second rank. Well, let’s say on a level with Gainsborough, on a level with Fragonard, one of those kind of artists up to 1793. The illness in 1793, lots of speculation, lots of learned essays by doctors. What was the illness? Some people think he suffered from syphilis. And the fact that he went deaf might corroborate that. There’s also an idea that he was poisoned by lead in his paints, whatever. It was a life-changing illness for him. And as with Beethoven, of course, deafness was a strong isolating factor.

Now the Caprichos, Goya is such an interesting figure for this whole debate of Enlightenment Romanticism. In many ways, he’s very influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. He’s a liberal, in his political opinions, and he believes in enlightened ideas. But especially after the turn of the century with the turn of political events and the Napoleonic wars and the peninsula campaign, he took a very much darker view of the world. And I think he must have questioned his enlightenment optimism. And the illness also plays a part in this.

And so, the Caprichos, they’re fantastic, dreamlike. You can see them. They’re an exploration of the irrational, the nightmare. But they also contain a kind of contemp, a commentary on human frailty and human vanity, as you can see here on the left hand side. I mean, they’re hard to explain in a way. I think you have to work them out for yourself, and fantastic from a technical point of view. He’s certainly aware of Rembrandt. And I’d say with Rembrandt or next to Rembrandt, he is the greatest of all etchers, of course, etching, which I’m sure most of you know.

It’s a technique where you have a copper plate. And usually, you, well, you can do dry point, you can just dig into the copper. But usually, you get this a nervous flickering line because you’ve got a layer of wax over the copper plate. And you use a needle to draw through the wax. And then the plate is put into acid, and the acid will eat into the copper where the wax has been taken away by the needle. And you can get very delicate, very nervous flickering effects with this technique. Of course, it’s actually a medium where there is a very limited number of good quality prints that you can take from a plate.

So Rembrandt’s solution to that was to rework the plates. With Goya, certainly, I mean, the plates for the Goya prints, well, they still exist. And they were in use long after he died. I mean, right into the 20th century, people were taking imprints from these plates of Goya. So you need to, if you want to buy an etching by Goya, you really need to be super careful. You want to only buy it from the most reputable source and with expert advice, because the later Goya imprints made after his death are very inferior. And they’re obviously not worth as much.

So this fascination with the irrational. So he’s a man of the Enlightenment, but he embraces certain aspects of Romanticism, which are in reaction to the rationality of the Enlightenment. This actually is a little picture. It’s in The National Gallery, wonderful nocturnal, lighter effects. It’s apparently inspired by a scene of witchcraft in a play. And look at just, this is very good detail. You can see the very, very thinly applied paint and very spontaneous. This is the notorious Manuel Godoy, who was the lover of the Queen Maria Luisa. And some people say he was also the lover of the king, Charles IV.

And anyway, he got a complete hold over both of them. And for a time around 1800, he was the effective ruler of Spain. And he was given the title of the Prince of Peace in 1801. He obviously got on well with Goya. I mean, Goya had to, very interesting, all all the lectures that Trudy’s been doing. For instance, yesterday about compromises that people make. And Goya certainly knew a lot about that, about having to keep on the right side of powerful people, having to make compromises. And he worked for the Godoy.

You can see, I suppose, that he was a very handsome man in a rather sensual way, certainly clearly a man you can see in the face, in the body that he liked the pleasures of the table as well as the pleasures of the bed. And here are the royal couple whom he is supposed to have serviced. Charles IV on the left hand side. And Maria Luisa of Parma on the right hand side. Here are two portraits of Maria Luisa. And you would think, how did Goya get away with this? There’s something about the Spanish. What can you say? 'Cause you could make the same comments about some of Velazquez’ portraits.

You know, the famous portrait of Pope Innocent X, which the Pope was shocked by it. He said, it’s , it’s too true. You think, well, couldn’t he have made a bit more of an effort to improve her looks than he did here? And this extraordinary big portrait of the family of Charles IV, pretty unflattering stuff. Another picture of course that does refer to Las Meninas with the Goya himself and the big canvas on the left hand side. And here is the king’s older sister. I think he enjoyed painting elderly ladies, which is not the case, for instance, with Ingres, as far as I know. The only portrait that Ingres ever agreed to paint of a woman who was beyond babe stage or beddable stage was this portrait of the contester . But she’s also a sprightly interesting character.

Around 1800, he is clearly mixing in liberal, enlightened political circles that want to move Spain forward to release it from the chains of superstition and the Catholic church and introduce some measure of democracy. And here, two of the main figures from this group, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos painted in 1798 and Antonio Melendez Valdez painted the year before in 1897. Jovellanos is, in a way, a strange image to produce of a leading politician or prime minister. He looks kind of defeated for life, by life. And he’s got this pose, traditional pose of melancholia going back to the famous Durer’s print of melancholia that you see on the right hand side.

And one could make a comparison with the title page of the Caprichos with a famous inscription, the sleep of reason produces monsters. So what kind of a comment is that from Goya and more images of melancholia, on the left hand side, Flaxman on the right. And so we feel, gosh, we’ve moved into another age. We’re into the age of Romanticism and the idea of an artist as no longer being a courtier, you know, with a powdered wig and a polite smile and a servant, but being somehow outside of society.

So this is a portrait of a fellow artist, a man called Asensio Julia. Julia by Goya on the left-hand side, that is around 1800. And the Delacroix self-portrait where he’s shown himself either as Hamlet or Ravenswood, the hero of The Bride of Lammermoor on the right hand side. And this portrait of Andres del Peral dates from the 1790s, it’s in The National Gallery, marvellous picture. The amount of very compelling, no attempt here to flatter or improve this rather lopsided face. It has been suggested that he may have suffered from a stroke. And so, the portraits, we’re really moving into a new era. And especially these are very different from the aristocratic portraits that he painted in the 1780s.

These are portraits of people who are on a social level with him. The guy on the left hand side, he’s called Bartolome Sureda y Miserol, that’s 1804. And he was a guy in charge of a porcelain factory. And clearly, the subject on the right hand side that we can see from what he’s holding in his hand is an artist, although we don’t have an identity for that portrait. And children, as I said, he’s a wonderful painter of children throughout his career. The little Manuel de Zuniga, that dates back to the 1780s in the somewhat more naive, tighter style. And this really charming painting of the son of a French general.

In my next talk, I’m going to be very much discussing Goya’s role during this period of the Napoleonic invasion and of course his extremely ambiguous role working, really, for leaders on both sides. But this little boy is called Victor Guye, that’s painted in 1810. So he’s the son of, I suppose, a hated oppressor of the Spanish, but a very appealing, touching portrait of a child. And again, this is something I think he has inherited in a way or has in common with Velazquez. This completely unsentimental view of childhood.

This is the portrait by Velazquez or the then heir to the Spanish throne, son of Philip IV. Of course he never made it to adulthood. Ooh, let’s do a comment here. The fragility of the child and the vulnerability of the birds and these rather sinister looking cat, threatening looking cats. And for comparisons some icky childish paintings of the same period by and the Lawrence chocolate boxy, overly charming paintings of children that we looked at last week. This is his grandson. He was obviously… Mariano. He was obviously very fond of his grandson, and we can follow this boy’s physical development through several portraits by Goya.

Here he is, he’s quite a small child with a toy, somewhat older on the verge of adolescence. And then as a rather nice looking young man, presumably around the age of 20. And I think, shall I, no, I’ll just talk a little bit about these. Because the painting on the right hand side is, again, one of these paintings rather like the skating minister that I talked about last week, which has become controversial in recent years. I mean, it was for a long time one of Goya’s most famous paintings. And then various experts doubted it, said it wasn’t by him, I think for reasons or technique and having x-rays showing the under paint, and so on.

But such a powerful image, who, you just think, yeah, well if it’s not by Goya, who is there out there that could paint such an extraordinary image of this, of human fear, terror, irrationality of events, great events that sweep up humanity, that were happening at this time? Of course, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. So this is really the point when… I mean, there’s already been a deepening hate of his art in the 1790s that is associated with his illness and his deafness. But after 1800 with these terrible political events in Spain, we see a total change in his art. Oh, actually I’ll carry on for just a little bit here. This is also, it’s a turning point in western culture and you see it in music as well.

Got Haydn here on the left hand side, who spent most of his life, of course, as a court servant of the Prince Lee Esther Harzy family only released from that kind of servitude right at the end of his life. And actually seems to have been quite happy with it. And so, from one generation to the next, you’ve got from Haydn, is represents, you could say, the 18th century, the Ancien Regime. You’ve got the turbulent beta.

Look at the difference in the hair, Haydn’s nice powdered wig, and Beethoven with his natural locks with a a little storm blowing through them and a troubled and quizzical expression on his face. And there is actually quite a striking resemblance. I mean, even a physical resemblance and certainly a resemblance in expression between these two great death geniuses. There’s Beethoven on left-hand side and Goya around this time on the right hand side.

And so, this is Beethoven. I’ve shown you this before. This is 1804, the Eroica Symphony. Well, you can argue whether it’s romantic or not. But it seems to announce a whole new era with these thunderous, violent chords that open the symphony, originally dedicated to Napoleon. Napoleon was of course the great white hope of European liberalism. But 1804, Napoleon declares himself emperor, and it’s clear that megalomania has got the better of him. So Beethoven angrily scores out his dedication to Napoleon from the title page of the Eroica Symphony and instead published it with the dedication to the memory of a great man. ‘Cause as far as he was concerned, Napoleon was no longer a great man, having declared himself emperor.

And Goya too must have gone through a similar process as being part of this group who were interested in enlightenment ideas and French ideas. And Napoleon and the French must have seemed to be a beacon of light and liberalism to them. But then of course, it turns terribly bitter and sour with the French invasion of Spain and terrible French brutality and atrocities against the Spanish as in this very famous painting of the 3rd of May, which I will be talking about on Saturday. So I’m going to stop here and see what questions we have.

Q&A and Comments

Painterly technique, yes, as opposed to linear technique. A linear technique is where the art, everything is based on drawing and line and contour. And a painterly technique is one which is based on what the French would call the matiere, the substance of paint. You are actually enjoy getting… It’s the texture of the paint and the way that it’s put on the surface, which is expressive and important.

Q: Are the subjects Spanish? A: Yes, by and large, they are, as there were few French people that he painted. I showed you a couple today, and I’ll show you some more next week. And occasionally of course he paints religious or mythological subjects, which are not necessarily Spanish.

Q: Could I recommend a biography of Goya? A: God, I’m not sure I can actually. I’m sure there must be so many. I’ve certainly got… The trouble is I’m not, I’m in Paris at the moment and most of my books, including quite a few on Goya, are back in London.

The mark was painted by Goya appears to have a very small head, disproportionate to his frame unless he’s nearly seven feet tall. Yes, that’s possibly true. That may be just a standard technique of flattery that everybody wanted to be taller than they were. In any number of portraits, you can see it, obviously, Bronzino portraits. They’re very famous for a small head in comparison with a very long body. You can also find it in the more flattering portraits of van Dyck for instance and Sargent.

It’s remarkable that paints have kept their colour integrity for centuries. Well, I’m not sure that they always have. No, I mean there are famous cases, of course, of colours that have changed and are fugitive. That’s a very big subject. You’d probably find whole books on that.

So somebody said Diane, ooh, there is a brave woman! She’d like to have lunch with Don Lewis. Well I bet, yes, he was a naughty boy. I think you probably would’ve had to fend him off at some point during lunch.

Granados inspired, how, yeah, I’ve just been listening to those, actually. I have the CD is right next to me about the . Wonderful series of piano pieces which were developed into an opera. Which of course, and that’s a story for another time, that that proved fatal to Granados. It’s too long a story to tell today.

Q: Do the sirens of Paris persist all night? A: Yes, I don’t really hear them anymore. I’m used to them.

Q: Would Goya have been aware of Shahda’s work and treatment of life? A: I think highly unlikely. I mean, the only possibility I think of him knowing Shahda’s work would have to have been right at the end of his life. I’m going to talk about this next week. We know that Goya went to Paris in 1824 'cause he saw the 1824 Paris salon. And then he, I’m sure he went to the Louvre, so he could have seen Shahda’s work at that point. But yeah, I mean, you can make interesting comparison between them, but I think it’s not a direct influence.

Illness couldn’t have been syphilis. I don’t know. Syphilis can take, maybe you’re a doctor and you know better than me. But syphilis is a very interesting illness that can take an awful lot of different forms.

Q: Would Goya have ever seen Fuseli’s The Nightmare? A: I think that’s possible. I think not the original painting, but I mean The Nightmare was a very, very famous painting. And Goya was certainly interested in prints, and I think he could have seen a print reproduction of Fuseli, that is quite likely.

This is not a question, but last duchess of alba would’ve been a great model for Goya. Yes. Although, I must say people who’ve had an awful lot of facelifts on the whole, I think tend not to make very . 'Cause there’s no expression in their face.

Q: Why should an artist improve the looks of a not so good looking? A: Simple reason, that the artist is paid. And Bell’s palsy, yes, I think that the man in The National Gallery, you’re right, people have suggested that for him. Yeah, I mean people don’t usually pay a portrait who doesn’t make them, a portraitist who doesn’t flatter them. That’s a simple answer to that question. If you want a more, an artist wants to make a living.

Some of the proportions of the children look wrong. Possibly, I’m not going to… I don’t think I can get into that one. Saying that you think the paint portraits are static, doelike possibly. Well, as I said, he didn’t study at the Royal Academy. He certainly would’ve been tutored and helped by his brother-in-law, Bayeu. And I think he was a very curious artist to learn by looking around him. What else have we got here? Good.

Q: Is there an, yes, there is a difference between an etching and engraving. A: They’re totally different print methods. I think I can’t really get more into it than I have already in the timeframe. You know, engraving, it doesn’t involve necessarily, the use of wax and acid and all these things. And it’s a much more laborious way of making a print, an engraving.

Q: Did he create all the clever titles the Caprichos? A: Yes, I assume he did.

The Chapman brothers, ooh! Do you know, I have very mixed feelings about that. I was incredibly shocked when the Chapman brothers… I was really shocked. I thought it was a terrible, terrible thing to do. But I think amongst that group of English artists, the Chapman brothers are more interesting than most. That’s about all I’ll say on that subject.

Barefoot Contessa, I have seen that movie. I can’t remember Goya being involved in that. That’s it, I think.

Thank you all very much, so I’ll move on, I think, to the most exciting things that you painted will be in the next lecture on Saturday. So look forward to talking to you then.

• [Judi] Thank you, Patrick. And we look forward to hearing part two on Saturday.

• Good! Thank you.

• [Judi] Thank you, everybody! Oh, Wendy. Hi, Wendy! Sorry, I… Seeing if Wendy wants to say a few words. Patrick, thank you. We’ll see everybody later this evening.

• Sorry, I just lost connection.

• [Judi] Oh!

• But it was fantastic. Thanks a million.

• Thanks, bye-bye!

• [Judi] Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye, see you later!