An amazing fact about Goya in his old age is that his work did not fall off, as so often happens with lesser artists, but even improved. Moreover, he also experimented with a new graphic technique (lithography) from about 1819, when he was already 73 years old, and even invented new subjects and new styles.
On this last period his most important prints were certainly the four large lithographs, originally measuring 12½ x 16¼ inches, called popularly The Bulls of Bordeaux, because made in that city where Goya had gone in 1824 to join other Spanish liberals in voluntary exile. These four prints were registered at the Depôt Légale of the Gironde Préfecture in November-December, 1825. All but one exist in two or three states, which proves that Goya was constantly experimenting, never quite satisfied. One hundred impressions are supposed to have been made of each lithograph, but perhaps there were a few more. [...] Leandro de Moratín observed in 1825 that Goya was incredibly active for a man in his eightieth year, and “still eager to observe the world about him.” It was as if nature, at the end, sought the compensate for his many illness and his late development.
Laurent Matheron, Goya's first French biographer, based his 1858 description of Goya's way of making these lithographs on an eyewitness account which rings true. While often quoted, this description can hardly be omitted in any discussion of The Bulls of Bordeaux prints. Here is a free English translation: “The artist executed these lithographs on an easel, the stone poised upon it like a canvas. He handled his crayons as if they were brushes, without ever sharpening them, and remained standing throughout-stepping back or coming closer by turns, in order to judge the results. By custom, he covered the whole stone first with a uniform gray crayon tone, and then removed with a scraper the portions he wished to highlight, here a head, or a body, there a horse or a bull. He then returned to the lithographic crayon in order to reinforce the shadows, the muscles, or to outline forms clearly and to give them movement... You might smile if I say that those prints of Goya were really drawn under a magnifying glass. But this is not far from the truth; for his eyesight had begun to fail...”
Could there possibly be a more vivid description of the old artist at work?
On this last period his most important prints were certainly the four large lithographs, originally measuring 12½ x 16¼ inches, called popularly The Bulls of Bordeaux, because made in that city where Goya had gone in 1824 to join other Spanish liberals in voluntary exile. These four prints were registered at the Depôt Légale of the Gironde Préfecture in November-December, 1825. All but one exist in two or three states, which proves that Goya was constantly experimenting, never quite satisfied. One hundred impressions are supposed to have been made of each lithograph, but perhaps there were a few more. [...] Leandro de Moratín observed in 1825 that Goya was incredibly active for a man in his eightieth year, and “still eager to observe the world about him.” It was as if nature, at the end, sought the compensate for his many illness and his late development.
Laurent Matheron, Goya's first French biographer, based his 1858 description of Goya's way of making these lithographs on an eyewitness account which rings true. While often quoted, this description can hardly be omitted in any discussion of The Bulls of Bordeaux prints. Here is a free English translation: “The artist executed these lithographs on an easel, the stone poised upon it like a canvas. He handled his crayons as if they were brushes, without ever sharpening them, and remained standing throughout-stepping back or coming closer by turns, in order to judge the results. By custom, he covered the whole stone first with a uniform gray crayon tone, and then removed with a scraper the portions he wished to highlight, here a head, or a body, there a horse or a bull. He then returned to the lithographic crayon in order to reinforce the shadows, the muscles, or to outline forms clearly and to give them movement... You might smile if I say that those prints of Goya were really drawn under a magnifying glass. But this is not far from the truth; for his eyesight had begun to fail...”
Could there possibly be a more vivid description of the old artist at work?
Philip
Hofer
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| The bulls of Bordeaux, Francisco Goya |
