MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR-GOYA(1746-1826)

MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
색채의 대가들

EDITED BY—
M. HENRY ROUJON
M. 앙리 루종 편

GOYA
(1746-1826)
고야(1746~1826)

PLATE I.—FERDINAND GUILLEMARDET
(Museum of the Louvre)

그림 1. FERDINAND GUILLEMARDET(루브르 박물관 소장)

This personage, who has left no record in history, was one of those high functionaries, half civil and half military, whom the First Republic sent to its armies to supervise the commissary department and also to exercise an espionage over its generals. Goya has given a vigorous rendering of a head that bears the double stamp of energy and high breeding; and the prevailing gray tone of this portrait, relieved only by the one dash of brightness in the tricoloured scarf, forms altogether a work of perfect harmony.

역사에 기록을 전혀 남기지 않은 이 그림 속 인물은 고위 관직에 있었으며 반은 평민으로 반은 군인으로 살았다. 프랑스 제1공화국이 군대를 경무과장 사무실을 감독하기 위해 군대를 보냈다. 그것의 장교들에 대한 첩보를 실행하기 위해서였다. 고야는 에너지와 높은 혈통의 두 가지 특징을 담은 머리를 원기왕성하게 표현했다.  이 초상화를 지배하는 회색의 어두운 분위기를 냈다. 삼색의 스카프에 약간의 밝은색으로 누그러뜨리면서 완벽한 조화를 함께 이룬다.

GOYA

BY FR. CRASTRE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY FREDERIC TABER COOPER

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

IN SEMPITERNUM.

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
NEW YORK—PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

March, 1914

THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A

CONTENTS

	Page
The Youth of Goya	21
The Glorious Period	48
The Closing Years	77

On a certain clear morning in the year 1760, a monk from the convent of Santa Fé, near Saragossa, was proceeding leisurely along the road which leads to that city, and reciting his breviary as he went. Raising his eyes from between two psalms, he perceived a young lad of some fifteen years of age deeply absorbed in drawing pictures with a bit of charcoal on one of the walls which bounded the way. The monk was a lover of the arts and had himself some little skill in drawing. Becoming interested, he drew nearer, and was amazed at the aptitude shown by the boy. Upon questioning him, he was much pleased with his replies and was completely won by his engaging manners. Without further reflection, he inquired the way to the home of the lad’s parents, poor peasants of the immediate neighbourhood, and had no difficulty in persuading them to entrust their son to him, promising to make him a painter of whom they would some day be proud.

1760년 화창한 어느 날 아침, (스페인 동북부에 있는) 사라고사 부근의 산타페(Santa Fé)의 수도원에서 온 한 수도사가 그 도시로 가는 길을 따라 한가롭게 걸으며   성무일도서(기도서)를 암송하고 있었다. 시편(기도)의 두 부분을 읽다가 고개를 들어 그는 15살 쯤 보이는 청년을 보게 된다. 그 처년은  그 길을 둘러싼 벽 한 부분에 그림을 그리는 데 푹 빠져 있었다. 수도사는 예술 애호가였고 그림에도 조금 소질이 있었다. 호기심이 발동한 그가 가까이 다가갔을 때 그 청년이 보여준 그림 솜씨를 보고 무척 놀랐다. 그 청년에게 질문을 했고, 그는 그 청년의 대답을 듣고 매우 흡족했고 그 청년의 매력있는 예절은 수도사의 마음을 완전히 사로잡았다. 더 생각해볼 것도 없이 수도사는 그 청년의 부모가 사는 집으로 가는 길을 물었다. 그 청년의 부모는 그리 멀지 않은 이웃의  가난한 농부(소작농)이었다. 수도사는  그들의 아들을 자신에게 맡기라고 그 청년의 부모를 설득했고, 그들이 언제가 자랑스러워 할 화가로 키울 것이라고 약속했다.

History has not preserved the name of the worthy monk so kindly disposed to art, but the boy was destined to make his own name illustrious: Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, the poor son of farming folk of Saragossa, fulfilled the promises of his patron. He had talent; better yet, he had genius; he fraternized with princes and with kings, and the renown of his glory restored its lost dignity to the art of Spain and did honour to painting throughout the world.

역사는 그렇게 친절하게 예술에 영향을 준 이 중요한 수도사의 이름을 남기지 않았지만, 그 청년은 자신의 이름을 걸출하게 만들 운명이었다. 그 청년은 바로 프란시스코 호세 데 고야 이 루시엔테스(Francisco José Goya y Lucientes)였다. 사라고사의 가난한 농부의 아들로 태어나 자신의 후원자의 약속을 실현시켰다. 그는 능력이 있었지만, 그보다 천재였다. 그는 여러 왕과 왕자들고 친구처럼 친하게 지냈으며 그의 영광스런 명성은 스페인 예술계에 실추된 위엄(영예)을 되찾아주었고 전 세계를 통틀어 회화 부문에서 명성을 얻었다.

PLATE II.—LA MAJA (CLOTHED)
(Museum of the Prado, Madrid)

그림 2. 옷을 걸친 LA MAJA

(스페인 마드리드 프라도 박물관 소장)

This reclining woman represents a very characteristic type of Spanish beauty. Goya has painted this picture under two different aspects, although in an absolutely identical pose. In one, the woman is represented completely nude, while here the artist has clothed her in corselet and trousers. It is asserted that the Duchess of Alba served him as model for both of these pictures.

누워 있는 이 여인은 스페인 미인의 매우 전형적인 특징을 표현했다. 고야는  이 그림을 두 개 그렸다. 자세는 완전히 똑같지만 하나는 완전히 벗은 여인이고, 다른 하나는 위 그림인데 속옷과 바지를 입은 여인이다. 알바의 공작부인이 이 두 그림의 모델로 고야에게 제공했다는 주장된다.

The advent of Goya in the middle of the eighteenth century marks a sort of providential date in the art of the peninsula. The Spanish school had fallen into profound decadence. Of the great traditions of Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran, and El Greco, nothing survived save the regret of knowing that they were forever lost. All the prodigious strength and powerful realism of that glorious period had become degenerate, enfeebled, anaemic to the point of utter decrepitude. In the horde of artists of that time, not a single hand was capable of taking up the brush let fall by the great predecessors. One only in all their number, a certain Claudio Coello, mustered sufficient energy to attempt to carry on the broken tradition. With praiseworthy insistence and undoubted talent he endeavoured to restore its bygone dignity to the painting of his time. Among many other noteworthy works, a magnificent canvas from his hand may still be seen in the sacristy of the Escurial. But this unlucky artist, like all the others, had come too late into a world which had grown too old. He could no longer be understood. The same decadence had overspread the whole of Europe, but to a greater degree in Spain than elsewhere. Politics, customs, traditions, popular taste, all bore the imprint of that degeneracy which heralds the end of a race. What could a Claudio Coello do in a society that had disintegrated to such a degree? His strength seemed too brutal, his realism was accused of barbarity, and the conscientiousness of his line-work caused him to be considered as a painter who had become old-fashioned and had fallen behind his times. All the favour of that period was bestowed upon the fa presto school of painting. Luca Giordano, who usurped Coello’s place in the regard of Philip II., had begun to inundate Spain with his facile and spiritless productions. He covered the walls of the Escurial with frescoes brushed in with a turn of the wrist, the dexterity of which ill concealed their absolute lack of inspiration. In his wake a swarm of Neapolitan painters, equally dexterous, but of even less worth, swooped down upon the peninsula, and day by day still further perverted the standard of popular taste. With the dawn of the seventeenth century the decadence, instead of diminishing, became more accentuated. The Neapolitans had been succeeded by Frenchmen—but what Frenchmen! Their art had neither the nobility of Poussin, nor the greatness of Le Brun, nor the suavity of Le Sueur; they bore such names as Ranc, Hovasse, Louis and Michel Vanloo, and their manner drew its inspiration from the worst type of composition brought into fashion by Mignard. Their whole effort was confined to producing the merely pretty, and their tastelessness was absolutely, yet regrettably, adapted to the growing affectation of the century. After them came the turn of the Tiepolos: these latter were not merely remarkable virtuosos of the palette; their prodigious facility was frequently ennobled by genuine talent; their line-work, though too often slighted, still showed a certain degree of conscientiousness, and some of their works are really worthy of admiration. But they too were infected with the malady of the century; they sacrificed themselves to the taste of their day, which was definitely degraded to the extravagances of fashion and the frivolities of gallantry. They were wholly lacking in the ability to impart to this type of painting the vivacious charm which the graceful and smiling ease of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher bestowed upon it in France. There was no groundfor hoping that they would ever effect a renaissance of the Spanish school.

Finally Charles III. summoned to Madrid a painter of German origin, Mengs by name, who at that time was regarded as the Messiah of an art which was destined to unite “the grace of Apelles, the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colouring of Titian!” Unusually gifted though he was, Mengs did not possess the necessary calibre to fulfil such brilliant promises. Haunted by the great compositions of Le Brun, he confined himself to the mythological order of painting and drew his inspiration from his illustrious model, without ever achieving an equal eminence or duplicating the latter’s admirable skill in composition. Upon his appointment as Superintendent of Fine-Arts in Spain, he established a sort of artistic dictatorship, which forced Spanish painting as a whole to adopt his own special aesthetic creed. The influence of Mengs would have been even more disastrous than that of his predecessors, if Providence had not placed Goya in the path of the artist monk of Saragossa.

Goya made his appearance, and with him Spanish art underwent a renewal and an aggrandizement. With one formidable backward leap, he attained the point of the broken tradition, in order to reweld the glorious chain. No intermediary connects him with the splendid lineage of Spanish painters. He proceeds directly from them. He is the natural heir of Velazquez and Zurbaran. He has their ardour, their vehemence, their passionate love for nature; like them, he finds the source of his strength in direct observation; as with them, the secret of his genius resides in that inner flame which bursts out of bounds in blazing flashes, with no clever trickery, no premeditation, but with that spontaneity which is born only of a clear vision, aided by a vigorous brush.

Nevertheless, this descendant of bygone masters is the most modern of all Spanish painters. He is never imitative, he always creates. From the living springs of great art he draws only what he needs to sustain his strength: a pious reverence for form, conscientiousness in line-work, sobriety of colour, and harmony of the component parts. For the rest, he is wholly of his own time, and of none other than his own time. He is truly the painter of national Spanish life. What he paints most willingly, most gladly, are the dances, the games, the joyous gatherings, the corridas, full of ardour and of movement, the majas, the manolas, the toreros, all the popular types; and one and all, as he pictures them, are spirited, life-like, entertaining, and well grouped, standing out boldly against their background of spreading fields, or bathing gaily in the violent clarity of the sunshine of Castile.

When considered under this double aspect, surrounded by the twin aureole of classicism and realism, Goya is seen to be an exceptional nature. He builds his fantasies upon a solid foundation of technique, and it is precisely because he founds his work upon this impregnable basis that he is able without apprehension to challenge the judgment of future centuries, and that his name will descend through the ages crowned with an unfading glory.

HIS YOUTH

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.

PLATE III.—THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN
(Museum of the Louvre)

The Louvre is not rich in works by Goya; it possesses only four. But the portrait of a woman, which is here reproduced, belongs to the period of the painter’s second manner, in which a most precise realism went hand in hand with a vaporous lightness and a pervading grayness of tone that recalls the most delicate creations of Prudhon. But the execution is vigorous, and in the expression of the face and in the employment of the colours there are a sureness and an intensity that are remarkable.

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
 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 bornfighter. 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.