The most Fascinating Story of Goya’s Artistic Transformation

The artist Francisco Goya’s work marked a major shift in the history of art, moving from traditional commissions by the Church and the Crown to a deeply personal and expressive style. Influenced by illness, war, and social change, his work explored emotion, fear, and social reality. This article, part of ‘The Andrew Weatherall Issue, Against the Grain’, brings together the perspectives of Charlotte Jonerheim and James Sleaford, who explore different stages of Goya’s artistic journey and his lasting impact on modern art. Here, we explore via two voices the world of the Artist Goya

Artistic Freedom Today

Charlotte Jonerheim: As artists in today’s Western world, we enjoy total artistic freedom and are rewarded for our individuality and creative difference. The wilder and crazier the work is, the more we want it, the more it opposes traditions, the better. This we take for granted, and as artists, we try hard to be different and invent our own style. We try to break boundaries and create our own paths.

18th Century- Art Patronage

But how do you pursue your own ideas and artistic freedom when you live in a world where there are no curators, no commercial galleries and virtually no private collectors? In the 18th century, the Church and the Crown commissioned art.

Goya’s Impact on Modern Painting

What drove the artists of that period to break boundaries, and what inspired them to carry on evolving? ‘There are no rules in painting.’ Today, this comment wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, but in Goya’s time, this was both radical and subversive. Goya opened up a new world of seeing and appreciating art. His teachings were simple: ‘May everyone be allowed to develop individual talents freely.’ This is typical of the artist’s philosophy.

Goya’s Artistic Evolution

As a painter, Goya started with tapestry cartoons. At the time, this was considered a low art form. But he soon developed his own style. More interested in light and dark than lines or outlines, his brush strokes were so free and loose that if you got close up the painting would become a field of colours with no boundaries, often leaving large areas bare.

He became famous in 1780 in Madrid, but soon became dissatisfied with painting cartoons for tapestries. It was at this time, thanks to friends and patrons, that he began to push the boundaries of painting. During this year, he obtained enormous freedom and became a painter to the king. Aware of his own originality and talent, Velázquez, Rembrandt and nature influenced Goya.

How Illness Changes Art

After a serious illness in 1792/93, Goya became deaf and withdrew from teaching and public life. He still painted commissions. As a result of his illness, Goya became more introspective. Always pushing boundaries and never beautifying or stylising his sitters, his subjects were always realistic, fleshy with human flaws. I do not believe that his deafness was the reason he produced his subsequent work; however, it may have been at 86 years old, a contributing factor. During this period, he produced some truly remarkable work. He began to reject some commissions, and most of his energy went to his own creations.

While convalescing, he began work on the ‘Caprichos or cabinet pictures.’ It was here that he began to break with traditional iconography and created scenes of often satirical fantasy. Demons, witches and bestial creatures combined with death and drama, madness, prisons, murder and cannibalism: all subjects virtually unheard of in the art world. These were years of political turmoil, and his radical subject matter, was readily embraced by the general public.

Goya and Political War Art

Goya became one of the first modern artists to be collected by private buyers, purely on the strength of the beauty and passion of his images. This gave Goya the confirmation of his ability and vision as an artist. Whether or not the work was sold, I believe that Goya would still have produced this work. He believed so passionately in his own creations and cared so little about financial rewards.

Francisco Goya ( 1746-1828) – ‘Courtyard with Lunatics’

From the early 19th century, Goya focused totally on his own creations, producing more and more outstanding work. Disturbed by his visits to the battlegrounds of the Peninsula War in Spain during French occupation, he produced The Disasters of War etchings that portray the horrors and gory, violent details of battle.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) – ‘The Duke of Wellington’

The Black Paintings

In 1819, Goya was almost housebound; during this time, he began to paint directly onto the walls of his residence Quinta Del Sordo’ (house of the death man). These images are known as the Black Paintings. The details and outlines are gone, the work is more about overall effect, expression, feelings and fear.

Goya’s last years were spent in self-imposed exile in France, where once again he produced extrodinary work, this time in the form of miniatures painted on ivory.

Goya, not only produced what the establishment expected, he also broke ground and paved the way for a new generation of artists. His life and work gave them the confidence and freedom to believe in their own ideas and not be a slave to fashion, trends and financial reward.

Charlotte Jonerheim

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)– ‘The Bewitched Man’

Dark Themes in Goya’s Work

James Sleaford: Why do I like Goya’s pictures? What attracts me to them? I find his work locks into your imagination with dark depictions of nightmarish visions, often containing witches, bats and demons, as well as scenes of torment and horror. One of the most important themes in his work is the use of theatrical events unfolding on the canvas. These dark images are loaded with socio-political observations provoking, pinching the soul, with images of lazy, corrupt land owners morphing into flea-bitten donkeys or witches sucking the blood from cadavers.

These metaphors challenged everything in which he saw injustice, from the brutality and hopelessness of war to the prejudice and hypocrisy of the Church. Two aspects of his work, which caught and haunted my imagination, were based around asses and greed.

Asses were a particular narrative to Goya, often thought to be the ‘Higaldo, a section of Spain’s lesser branch of nobility, which felt that work, particularly physical, was beneath them and hence were subsequently impoverished. Goya wittily depicted them as asses leafing through family albums of more asses. His caricatures incensed something more nightmarish and humiliating.

These feelings also come to life in the story Pinocchio, in particular, when truant boys follow the slimy ringmaster towards his delinquent fairground. After swigging beer, one by one, the boys all start to grow tails and long brown ears, their frightened cries turning to donkey bleats as they are rounded up and shipped off to work camps. There is something gratifying in watching the wayward kids become humiliated and get what they deserve, figures of fun to be stared at, but equally, pangs of guilt have always haunted me at this lust for cruelty.

When it comes to the greedy and the wealthy, Goya powerfully demonises his subjects; their mouths open disgustingly wide, lazy and disfigured creatures. They appear as figures of hate and condemnation. To Goya, there was nothing worse than greed and little better than the greedy being humiliated. I remember watching a play a few years ago about a wealthy aristocrat and an invited group of guests, whose friendship was oriented on the lavishness of the gifts the aristocrat bestowed at his dinner parties.

On one such evening, the host set a task before anyone could receive their expensive presents. Sitting at a long, beautifully set dining table, each guest was given a bowl of cold and sour porridge. The conditions were simple; finish all the porridge to receive the gifts. Detesting at first, the guests tentatively started to eat, with one struggling guest vomiting the porridge back into his own bowl.

As it began to dawn on the guests that their efforts were in vain, the adjacent guest to the vomiting man began to finish his neighbour’s regurgitated meal. His fellow guests winced and scowled at their host as the bowl was finished, that was, until they were rewarded with their expensive gifts.

This play, for me, depicted everything Goya hated about the greedy and bestowed nothing but humiliation and torment on them. His images of the greedy getting their just deserts are as relevant now as it was in the late 1700s, and inspire me today.

James Sleaford

Through this article, Charlotte Jonerheim and James Sleaford show Goya’s shift from traditional commissions to a more personal and independent art. They highlight how illness, war, and social change shaped his creative evolution. They highlight, ultimately, what an impressive and important artist he was.

If you want to learn more about this famous painter, you can read ‘The National Gallery-Francisco de Goya’

If you enjoyed reading ‘The most fascinating story of Goya’s Art and History’ article, then why not read ‘Clash: Goya – Becoming Alive On Screen’

.Cent Magazine, London. LuxuryMind