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[Pg 25]
[Pg 26] 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.

He now returned to Saragossa, for the sake of his aged parents, with whom he spent the closing months of the year 1774, after which he once more set forth for Madrid. There he again fell in with his faithful friend, Bayeu, discovered himself to be in love with the latter’s sister, Josefa Bayeu, and married her a few months later.

His brother-in-law again offered to introduce him to Mengs, and this time, weary no doubt of adventures, he accepted the offer. The Superintendent of Fine-Arts gave him a most cordial reception. We have already had occasion to refer to the almost despotic authority which Mengs at this period exerted over Spanish art and the singular direction in which he had guided it. In the decorative works which he was conducting in the palaces at Madrid and Aranjuez, there was, in the words of M. Charles Yriarte, “nothing but an agglomeration of struggles of Titans, apotheoses, triumphs of Hercules, and glorifications of Ceres; but Goya soon came to scale Olympus, and turn Venus into a manola, and substitute his frightful Saturn devouring his Children, in his Quinta [Goya’s country house], for the figure of Father Time, with his traditional stooping shoulders, partaking of his progeny with prudence and circumspection.”

Up to this moment Goya had been far more intent upon observing and learning than upon painting; he had as yet produced nothing, and no one even suspected the powerful faculties that were dormant in him. More as a favour to Bayeu than from any personal confidence, Mengs entrusted him with the composition of some cartoons for the royal manufactory of Santa Barbara. Goya set to work, and from the start broke squarely away from the superannuated tradition of the Superintendent. Throwing aside the entire paraphernalia of mythology, he confined his cartoons wholly to subjects borrowed from national life. In this work he gave free rein to the full spontaneity of his talent and to his riotous imagination, and in the course of it he revealed the full wealth of his imagination and his marvellous instinct for decorative art. The result was a revelation: a genuine ovation greeted these modern compositions, so full of life and movement and colour. Mengs himself, who was not lacking either in intelligence or in taste, was frankly delighted and warmly congratulated the young artist. At Court and in the city nothing was talked of but Goya and his cartoons; from this moment he entered upon his true role as national painter.

This first attempt had the result of enlightening Goya as to his own powers. Not that he had previously mistrusted them, but he had feared that he[Pg 41]
[Pg 42] was not yet sufficiently equipped to venture upon a public appearance. But on the strength of the success of his cartoons he took stock of himself as follows: “He was thirty years of age and he realized now that he had only to take his brush in hand in order to become a great painter.”

Henceforth, throughout a period of more than fifty years, he was destined to produce unweariedly, trying his hand at the most diverse types, alternating between painting and engraving; and in his life-work, which, taken as a whole, is one of the vastest and most varied that ever came from any artist, he has given us the measure of his prodigious fecundity.

He made his debut in genre painting, and he drew his inspiration straight from the life of the people. Spain, for that matter, furnished an exceptional nutriment for his order of talent; land that it was of vivid light, ardent colour, picturesque manners and curious costumes, it was well designed to fire that vigorous and impulsive nature to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. And hence, while Madrid looked on and marvelled, there came in swift succession from his brush a whole series of pictures saturated with local colour: bull fights, attacks of bandits, clandestine meetings, processions, masquerades, all the life of the Spanish city and the Spanish highway, reproduced in piquant, accurate, brightly coloured scenes, of charming naÏvetÉ and exquisite naturalness, replete with vivacity and riotous fancy.

On closer inspection it would be easy to find a certain amount of incorrectness in the drawing. Some of his bulls, especially, are endowed with anatomical proportions that at best only approximate the truth. But they have such spirit, such vigour, such nimbleness, such furious agility, that we feel ourselves snatched up and borne along by this living whirlwind, this intensity of movement, almost as though we were bodily present in the arena where the blood-stained drama is in the course of enactment. As to the colouring, it is very light and very luminous and silvery.

Almost at the same period Goya published a collection of etchings in which he had reproduced the most celebrated masterpieces of Velazquez. It was a daring venture, but it had no terrors for the young artist. Goya did no injustice to Velazquez; he succeeded most felicitously in reproducing in these etchings not only the design, but the colour values and characteristic spirit of his model. This magnificent series, executed during the year 1778, comprises sixteen pieces, which to-day are of inestimable value.

That same year the Franciscans went to great expense to decorate their church; they appealed to the most renowned artists which Madrid at that period possessed. Goya was entrusted with the decoration of a chapel which required two paintings. The subjects specified were a Christ on the Cross and a St. Francis Preaching. The Christ on the Cross is distinguished by a very fine religious spirit, enhanced by its admirable drawing and by a dignity quite its own. The fine and delicate modelling suggests comparison with the most perfect works of Italy; and the whole painting is overspread with an infinitely light surface coat of colour, very luminous and very pale.

This canvas is the best of all Goya’s religious works. On the contrary, his St. Francis Preaching in no way deserved the vogue which it enjoyed at the time, both at Court and in the city circles. Its heavy composition, pretentious and ill balanced, did no credit to any of Goya’s qualities, save that of colourist, in which respect he was always interesting.

Goya was now the idol of the whole population of Madrid, who revelled in his fantasies and regarded him as their national painter. Already celebrated through his scenes of the life of the people, he had now acquired a new prestige through the fame of his religious paintings; and there was good reason for astonishment that he had not yet been rewarded by any official honour. His rival painters had scant love for him, or, to put it more frankly, they hated the powerful originality of his talent so far removed from the slow product of their uninspired toil. In order to belittle him, they censured the incorrectness of his drawing and the violent character of his subjects. But public opinion triumphed over this dead weight of malevolence. However reluctantly, the Academy of Saint-Marc welcomed him among its members on the seventh of May, 1780, hailing him as “academician by merit.”

A few months later the Chapter of Nuestra SeÑora del Pilar at Saragossa decided to have its sanctuary decorated and instituted a competition among the leading artists of Spain, under the direction of Goya’s brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu. Goya decided to compete, and one of the vaults, with its adjacent panels, was assigned to him. The sketches which he submitted were only half satisfactory, and the Chapter requested him to modify them. Goya took the criticisms in ill part, imputing them, whether rightly or wrongly, to his brother-in-law’s jealousy, and refused in any way to modify his designs. A bitter quarrel might have resulted, if mutual friends had not intervened to reconcile the two artists. Finally, Goya agreed to make certain concessions; the vault was entrusted to him, and he forthwith commenced the execution of his frescoes.

The subject chosen represented The Virgin and the Martyred Saints in their Glory. This immense work required no less than three years of the artist’s time, and he expended upon it all his science and all his exceptional qualities as a colourist. It is an attractive work, cleverly composed, possessing a fine decorative effect, brilliant and warm, and in no way inferior to the most resplendent frescoes of Tiepolo. Only one thing was lacking, the religious spirit, of which Goya was wholly destitute. In works of this order, dexterity is not sufficient; the breath of the inner zeal is necessary; cleverness, dexterity, the gift of colour, cannot make up for the absence of faith. As often as Goya attempted religious painting, the result showed the same general order of deficiencies, because he always treated his subjects solely as a painter, and not, after the manner of Raphael and Correggio, as a devout believer.

Furthermore, the ideal was not in his line; the dominant note of his talent, before all else, was naturalism. Genre painter by temperament, he sought by preference for the picturesque aspect of his subjects. Owing to these conditions, his frescoes at Saragossa and in general all his large religious compositions are in reality nothing else than vast genre paintings.