Goya: Drawings and Etchings

Goya: Drawings and Etchings

Spanish painter Francisco Goya completed some 500 oil paintings and murals, about 300 etchings and lithographs, and many hundreds of drawings. The first of his great series of engravings, Los Caprichos issued in 1799. The set consists of 82 plates in etching reinforced with aquatint, and their humour is constantly overshadowed by an element of nightmare. They savagely and satirically attack on social customs and abuses of the Church, with elements of the macabre in scenes of witchcraft and diabolism. Equally dramatic, more savage and chilling are the sixty-five etchings The Disasters of War (1810-14) - nightmare scenes, depicting atrocities committed by both French and Spanish. They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. In his last years Goya took up the new medium of lithography (in his series the Bulls of Bordeaux), while his paintings illustrate his progress towards a style which foreshadowed that of the Impressionists.