Short biography of Spanish Rococo and Romantic artist Francisco de Goya. His paintings and etchings provide insights of Spanish life and history.

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish painter and engraver, of Spanish Rococo and Romantic styles. Goya's famous paintings include: "Saturn Devouring One of His Sons," (c. 1822) "The Third of May 1808," (1814) and "La Maja Vestida." (c. 1803) He was a Spanish court painter who also painted portraits of royalties.

Goya produced about 500 oil paintings. He was a master of the traditional styles of portraiture, at the same time open to experiments. He virtually foreshadowed much later major painters, from Eugène Delacroix to Pablo Picasso.

Early years and Tapestry Cartoons

Born on March 30, 1746, in a poor village in north of Spain, he began to study art at 14. By 1766 he was working for the painter to the King of Spain. He later married his master's sister. Goya visited Rome, returned to his home in Saragossa, and in 1775 went back to Madrid where he obtained work in a tapestry factory, making painting used as designs called "cartoons" by the weavers. The 17 years that followed Goya made sixty such paintings that displays colorful pictures of the more charming aspects of Spanish life in his day.

Painter to King Charles IV and other Spanish Royalties

At 40, Goya was appointed painter to King Charles IV. Like the contemporary baroque artist Diego Velázquez, he became a court painter. His portraits of the royal family and court immediately became famous that in due time, he was named Court Painter. He painted a portrait of Queen Maria Luisa and that of four successive kings of Spain.

Meanwhile, he also continued to paint religious works for churches at Valdermoro, Santa Ana de Valladolid, Toledo Cathedral, and in Valencia Cathedral.

Effect of Illness

While on his way to Cadiz, about the end of 1792, Goya was stricken with a severe illness that left him deaf. His unofficial paintings, more than before, became charged with emotion, and his brushwork became increasingly free and intense. In 1798 he completed the frescoes for the ceiling of the Church of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid, in which he actually used sponges instead of brushes to apply the dabs of color, and thus created beautiful, loose forms rarely seen in art at that time.

The Peninsular War: France Invades Spain

When the French invaded Spain in 1808, Goya's deepest feelings were roused. He had hoped that Napoleon's army would bring needed reform against enslavement of the masses. Instead there was terrible slaughter. Goya depicted his horrors in some of the most stirring etchings ever created, in the series called The Disaster of War. Many of his paintings of protest were done on wall panels in his home, Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man's House).

Among his later works are the "Black Paintings" (Prado, Madrid) with such horrific images as Saturn Devouring One of His Sons about 1822.

Final Years

Unable to bear the oppression in Spain, in 1824 he lived in exile, deaf and almost blind, until his death four years later, aged 82.

The originality and timelessness of his work has affected art through the ages. The greater part of his works is in Madrid but are represented in all the world's prominent art galleries.

Goya's Works Resource:

Exhibits, Museums and Public Art Galleries

Sources:

Chambers Biographical Dictionary (2002)

Larousse Dictionary of Painters (1989)

Masters of Art by Samm Sinclair Baker and Natalie Baker (1987)