Quote of the Day

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. 
                                 -  Francisco Goya

Virtual Deaf Man's House

For the past 2 weeks I've been running the 14 paintings from Goya's Quinta Del Sol (The Deaf man's House) which are better known as The Black Paintings. If you're interested in seeing how they were placed in the actual  farm house where Goya painted these works in self-exile in his last years, there is a virtual tour online (of course) showing placement and relative sizes - well worth a look if you're interested in Goya.

Goya: Judith & Holofernes - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Pilgrimage to San Isidro - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Procession of the Holy Office - Black Paintings 1820-23

Quote of the Day

Always lines, never forms! But where do they find these lines in Nature! For my part I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow. - Goya

Goya: Two Women - Black Paintings 1820-23

Quote of the Day

The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation.


                                - Francisco Goya

Goya: The Dog - Black Paintings 1820-23

You can view Goya's Dog as being submerged, up to its neck, buried in sand, or sinking slowly into quicksand - unable to extricate itself. It raises its head, trying to keep itself "above water". The emptiness of the picture frame above it and the placement of the dog at the base of the painting emphasises its helplessness. 

Alternatively, you can see the dog as hiding behind a ridge, trying to hide and protect itself. It raises its head looking up at the impending danger from above – which might be some kind of landfall, flood or storm. And now the depth of the upper area suggests the overwhelming nature of whatever the threat is.

Either way, it is a picture about survival in the face of hopeless doom. Whether the danger comes from below or from above, the picture tells us there is no escape. Simple, but in so many ways one of the most powerful of Goya's Black Paintings and one which speaks volumes on his views at the time. These last works by Goya show the crossover between traditional and modern as well as the ambiguity of the image and this rightfully places Goya as the first of the Moderns. This work is a brilliant example of that unique positioning in history.
Burn brightly, Pete 

Goya: Old Men Eating - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Leocadia - Black Paintings 1820-23

Leocadia (or Leocardia) Weiss lived with Goya the last years of his life. She was hired as a housekeeper, bringing with her daughter Rosario. Goya taught Rosario painting and drawing skills, and she later had a career as a painter in France and Spain. Goya's will instructed that at his death she was to be treated as a "natural child." This has led to speculation that Goya fathered Rosario as he had known Leocadio for several years prior to hiring her. However, many Goya biographers say that the dating does not match up, that it is more likely that Leocadia's husband, whom she had divorced years earlier, was Rosario's father.


This painting of Leocadia is one of the fourteen "Black Paintings" executed by Goya upon the walls of his house in Madrid. X-rays of the image show that originally the figure leaned on a fireplace mantle, and that she was not dressed in mourning clothing, as shown here. The usual speculation is that Goya himself added the funeral aspects later, when mood, or old age, had moved him to give a different message to the image. 

Goya: Men Reading - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Fight with Cudgels - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Deaf Man - Black Paintings 1820-23

Goya: Asmodea - Black Paintings (Fantastic Vision) 1820-23

Goya : Black Paintings - Saturn Eating his Son (c1820)

Goya's Black Paintings

The most celebrated pictures of Goya's last years are the series of 14 so-called "Black Paintings" completed on the walls of a country house just outside Madrid that he purchased in 1819. Aged 74 when he began this group, he had already been dangerously ill in 1819, and these works may be in part a result of that illness, but the overall meaning of this series of dark paintings has never been satisfactorily explained. 


All the images were painted directly onto the farmhouse walls and are all damaged in some way or another. Fortunately, after Goya's death the farmhouse owner recognised the worth of the paintings and in 1878 they were transferred to canvas supports. Goya painted these works very rapidly, using broad strokes applied with large brushes, palette knife and possibly sponges. He may have regarded them as a technical experiment due to the "looseness" of the imagery. They are probably best considered as dark fantasies, despite several elements being based upon earlier images. 


Over the next two weeks I'll run these 14 works in total instead of my usual practice of choosing one artist per week... I've been mixing the periods up for the last month or so with works by Bronzino, Dali, Weston etc. 


The first cab of the Goya rank is Atropos or "The Fates" (1820-1823)