Disparates [Follies]

Disparates [Follies]

  • 1815-1824
  • Four 'Follies' published in 'L'Art' magazine
  • Cat. G_2357
  • Acquired in 1992
  • Observations: 'L'Art. Revue hebdomadaire illustrée' magazine, Year 3, Volume II, Paris-London, A. Bellue, 1877; pp. 6-7, 40-41, 56-57 and 82-83. The copy of the 'L'Art' magazine preserved in the Bank of Spain, one of five made, is missing the print on vellum of 'Animal Folly / Other Laws for the People'
By:
José Manuel Matilla Rodríguez

In 1877 the Paris magazine L'Art published the four prints of the Follies which had been separated from the rest of the series and had not previously been published. The publishers, unaware of the workshop proofs with their handwritten titles, entitled these four prints Rain of Bulls [Folly of Little Bulls]; Other Laws for the People [Animal Folly]; What a Warrior! [Well-known Folly] and A Circus Queen [Timely Folly] — in Spanish, Lluvia de toros [Disparate de toritos]; Otras leyes para el pueblo [Disparate de bestia]; ¡Qué guerrero! [Disparate conocido] and Una reina del circo [Disparate puntual]. L'Art was a weekly magazine, which published etchings alongside articles on art. Published since 1875, the magazine tapped into a wave of bibliophilia in Paris at the time, and a renewed interest in etching among painters and engravers who discovered in this technique a way of creating original prints, at a remove from academic reproduction engravings. The result was a plethora of works of extraordinary quality, which prized both the original work and the quality of the prints, with great care taken in the choice of paper and ink. The regular edition of the magazine included each of the prints with the title and a reference to the authorship, printed in black ink on laid bone-coloured paper. However, in view of the propensity for exclusivity felt by many bibliophiles, five special copies of each issue were produced, which also included three variations, made from each copperplate before the lettering was engraved. Thus, each of these five copies contained the following prints made from the same copperplate: the first, on laid bone-coloured paper with black ink, including a text with the authorship and title; the second, on wove paper with natural sienna ink; the third, also printed before the lettering was engraved, on laid Japanese paper with black ink; and, finally, the fourth, also without lettering, on vellum with black ink. While the first three were bound with hinges, the last, due to the quality of the material, was left unbound, interleaved between the pages of the text. These prints are valuable not only as artworks by Goya, but as a product and record of the prevailing aesthetic of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, at a time when it was considered perfectly legitimate to 'manipulate' the works, influencing the contemporary vision of the artist's work. The edition is characterized by a refined printing process, with the maximum care being taken over the printing process: neat bevelling, selection of the best ink for each type of paper, and an attempt to use the most aesthetically pleasing types of paper. Together with the relative definition of the plate, the tones of the paper and the colour of the ink are combined to obtain a print of extraordinary quality. As well as laid paper, other excellent quality papers were chosen, such as the J. Whatman Turkey Mill wove paper, generally used for the luxury edition; Japanese laid paper, whose delicate transparency turned the print into an exquisitely fragile item; and finally, vellum, a medium traditionally associated with luxury editions, reminiscent of the prints by the great masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Paradoxical though it might seem, these aesthetic divertissements that 'manipulate' Goya's work are closer to what the artist himself sought than the edition produced by the Academy in 1864 with the remaining eighteen plates; the printing is close to natural, with almost all the excess ink removed, thus highlighting the symbolic value Goya placed on white in his prints, as can be seen in all his previous series.

The dating of the Follies is disputed, although we know for sure that Way of Flying was made prior to 1816, since Goya gave his friend Ceán Bermúdez a copy of the Tauromaquia, which went on sale that year, in which he included this print. It is possible, however, that he continued to work on these prints, which are truly remarkable for their size and the expressive deformation of the figures, right up to his departure for France in 1824. The copper plates, together with those of the Disasters of War, were kept at the Quinta del Sordo, which was acquired by Goya in 1819, but it is not possible to specify when they were first stored there.

Together with his Black Paintings and some other works from that period, the Follies show the first manifestations of Goya's truly modern style. Unlike Classicism, characterized by conforming to rules and by following and imitating the rules of nature, Modernity is characterised by the predominance of the subject over any external reference, by the absolute power of the imagination, released from any imitation, and by the subjectivisation of thought and art. The structuring of the work — of the series, in this case — is a constant feature of Classicism, whereas in Modernity we see the breaking down of the very concept of sequence, of a beginning and an end. Thus, the break with the natural and imitative logic of nature, and consequently with its dispersion, to the benefit of the artist's own subjective, of what lies behind the apparent, leads to the loss of denotative points of reference. This breaks with the formerly prevailing logic of communication; from here on in, viewers were to find themselves confronted by pictures for which they lacked any stable or familiar interpretative code. Goya's prints, because they are invented without obvious references, lack a single, unique explanation. Very varied explanations have been given of these extraordinarily modern, ranging from a satire of customs and society in general, similar to that found in the Caprices, to a reflection of the politics of the complex reign of King Ferdinand VII, with its alternating periods of absolutism and fierce repression with brief periods of greater freedom and hope, in which the King even temporarily restored the Spanish Constitution. One should perhaps note that these images depict the turbulent, ignorant and carnivalesque Spain in which the artist himself was immersed; for Goya, there was no other way out but to leave for exile in Bordeaux.

After the artist's death in 1828, the copper plates of the Follies became the property of his estate, and they remained in the family until the death of his son, Francisco Javier, in May 1854. Eighteen plates appear to have been acquired by Román Garreta, and on 19 July 1856 Jaime Machén Casalins first offered them to the Spanish State for the National Museum of Engraving (Calcografía Nacional). In October 1862 they were eventually acquired by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, together with the eighty plates of the Disasters of War series. Four other plates —the ones that do not appear in the Academy's 1864 edition and were first published in 1877 in the French magazine L'Art— were separated from the set and became the property of the painter Eugenio Lucas, who was involved in valuing the Black Paintings at the Quinta del Sordo in October 1856. He may well have been given them in payment for his work, or he may simply have chosen to buy them. Upon Lucas' death in 1870, the four plates were offered to the Academy. However, due to lack of agreement, they finally left Spain and were acquired by the French art merchant Edmont Sagot. The plates, which were in a private Parisian collection, were recently acquired by the Louvre.

José Manuel Matilla Rodríguez

 
By:
Manuela Mena
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Fuendetodos (Zaragoza) 1746 - Bordeaux (France) 1828

The name appearing on his baptismal documents is Francisco Joseph Goya, but in 1783 he added the word “de” to his surname, and that is how he signed his self-portrait in the Caprichos when they were published in 1799: “Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Pintor.” At 53, he was at the height of his career and social standing, and in October he was appointed First Court Painter by the monarchs. From a young age Goya had wanted to find the documents certifying his nobility in the Zaragoza archives, but he never did. Success as an artist was slow in coming, despite the fact that he had begun studying painting at the age of 13. This was in José Luzán’s studio, although in 1762 he was already attempting to obtain a grant that the Royal Academy of San Fernando awarded to young men from the provinces so they could study in Madrid. The following year he attempted to obtain the firstclass Painting Prize, but neither of these efforts was successful. A few years later, in 1769 — probably after living between Zaragoza and Madrid, where he may have studied at Bayeu’s studio — he decided to pay his own way to Italy. And in 1771, he was equally unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain the prize of the Academy of Parma. From Italy, he returned to Zaragoza, where he must have had some kind of support, because that year he painted a fresco in the choir at the Basilica of El Pilar. In 1773, he married Francisco Bayeu’s sister, and this was decisive in his move to Madrid in 1775, where his brother-in-law had invited him to collaborate on a project to paint cartoons for tapestries to be hung in the royal palaces. This marked the beginning of his slow rise in courtly circles over the following years.

In 1780, at the age of 32, Goya was elected Academician of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, for which he presented Christ on the Cross (Museo del Prado, Madrid). At the same time, the chapter of the Basilica of El Pilar commissioned him to paint a fresco on the dome of the Regina Martyrum. The Count of Floridablanca’s support was also decisive for his career in the early 1780s. After painting his portrait in 1783, Goya was commissioned to make one of the paintings for the church of San Francisco el Grande. It seems very likely that Floridablanca also recommended his services to the Infante Don Luis and his family in 1783 and 1784, as well as to Banco de San Carlos for the portraits of its directors. In 1785, Goya was assistant director of painting at the Academy of San Fernando, and in 1786 he was finally appointed the King’s Painter. The following year, he obtained the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna and soon thereafter, that of the Count and Countess of Altamira. Goya was 43 years old when Charles IV came to the throne in 1789, and he was soon appointed court painter by the new monarch. By then, only one of his six children was still alive. Goya was still painting tapestry cartoons for the king at that time, but over the following ten years, his life and his approach to art were to change radically. This transformation may have begun with the grave illness that left him deaf in 1793. That is when be began to make independent works, such as the “diversiones nacionales” (“National Pastimes”) that he presented at the Academy in 1794, or the series of drawings and subsequent prints known as Los Caprichos. He also continued to respond to commissions for religious works, but the results were filled with such unprecedented innovations that they are considered even more revolutionary than his work in other genres. His canvases for La Santa Cueva in Cádiz (1796) and The Arrest of Christ, which Cardinal Lorenzana commissioned for the sacristy at Toledo Cathedral (1798), are fine examples. Goya’s fame is also due to his portraits of the Spanish elite from the monarchs to the leading aristocrats, including the Duke and Duchess of Alba, as well as outstanding cultural, military and political figures from that period, such as Jovellanos, Urrutia, Moratín and Godoy. This work culminated in 1800 with his portrait of the Countess of Chinchón and The Family of Charles IV (Museo del Prado, Madrid), as well as others that paved the way to modernity, such as his version of Venus as a nude model in the Majas (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

With the arrival of the new century, Goya and all his compatriots were affected by the war against Napoleon. His testimony is some of the most impressive of all — a deeply critical view marked by his reflections on violence in such works as Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) or, in 1814, his Second and Third of May, 1808 (Museo del Prado, Madrid). His portraits offer a view of the new society, including its aristocratic patrons, such as the Marchioness of Santa Cruz, the Marchioness of Villafranca Painting her Husband and, from 1816, the Tenth Duke of Osuna (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne), as well as the new bourgeoisie, with likenesses of Teresa Sureda (National Gallery, Washington), his own son and daughterin- law, Javier Goya and Gumersinda Goicoechea (Noailles collection, France), and the actress Antonia Zárate. Before and after the war, Goya continued with his series of drawings and prints, including Tauromaquia and his Disparates, which dates from the years when the Constitution of 1812 was abolished. These culminate in the Black Paintings on the walls of his own house.

Goya’s portrait of Ferdinand VII is one of those that most clearly convey its model’s character, and this king’s repression was almost certainly the reason why the artist left for France in 1824, following the arrival of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis in Madrid that May. After a stay in Paris in July and August, where he visited that year’s Salon, he settled definitively in Bordeaux. His work from the final years of his life contained many innovations, including the use of lithography for a new series of four prints called Bulls of Bordeaux, and the miniatures he painted on ivory, with subjects that also appear in his drawings from those years. There, he offers a broad view of contemporary society, mixed with his memories and experiences, all marked by his permanent desire to fully explore human nature.

Manuela Mena

 
 
José Camón Aznar Los Disparates de Goya y sus dibujos preparatorios, Barcelona, 1951. Tomas Harris Goya. Engravings and Lithographs, Oxford, 1964, vol. 2. Valeriano Bozal Imagen de Goya, Barcelona, 1983. Nigel Glendinning Francisco de Goya, grabador. Instantáneas. Disparates, «La problemática historia de los Disparates y su interpretación carnavalesca», Madrid, Caser, 1992. Vv.Aa. Disparates. Francisco de Goya. Tres visiones, Incluye: Juan Carrete y José Manuel Matilla, «Disparates. Tres visiones»; Pedro Aullón de Haro, «Sobre el sentido de los Disparates»; Valeriano Bozal, «Disparates grotescos»; Nigel Glendinning, «Motivos carnavalescos en la obra de Goya»; Jesusa Vega, «Los Disparates. Una colección de veintidós láminas grabadas»; Javier Blas, «Bibliografía»; «Catálogo de estampas» [1816-1824, El taller de Goya: proceso creativo; 1864, La Academia y la difusión de los Proverbios; 1877, París y la bibliofilia. Disparates inéditos], Madrid, Calcografía Nacional - Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1996. José Manuel Matilla Goya, «Approccio ai Disparates di Francisco de Goya», Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, 2000, pp. 107-157.