b. March 30, 1746, Fuendetodos, Spain--d. April 16, 1828, Goya is considered the 18th Century's foremost painter and etcher of Spanish culture, known for his realistic scenes of battles, bullfights and human corruption. Goya lived during a time of upheaval in Spain that included war with France, the Inquisition, the rule of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and, finally, the reign of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. Experts proclaim these events -- and Goya's deafness as a result of an illness in 1793 -- as central to understanding Goya's work, which frequently depicts human misery in a satiric and sometimes nightmarish fashion. From the 1770s he was a royal court painter for Charles III and Charles IV, and when Bonaparte took the throne in 1809, Goya swore fealty to the new king. When the crown was restored to Spain's Ferdinand VII (1814), Goya, in spite of his earlier allegiance to the French king, was reinstated as royal painter. After 1824 he lived in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux until his death, reportedly because of political differences with Ferdinand. Over his long career he created hundreds of paintings, etchings, and lithographs, among them Maya Clothed and Maya Nude (1798-1800); Caprichos (1799-82); The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 (1814); Disasters of War (1810-20); and The Black Paintings (1820-23).  Related Paintings of Francisco de goya y Lucientes :. | The Bullifight | War scene | Water Carrier | Memory like a half-length | Tiburcio |
Related Artists:
James Seymour
British Painter , ca.1702-1752 English painter and draughtsman. The son of James Seymour (d 1739), a dealer in pictures and precious metals, Seymour was among the first English painters to specialize exclusively in sporting subject-matter. Though he possibly received some informal drawing instruction from the topographer Francis Place, Seymour was essentially a self-taught artist whose education was based on the study of pictures that passed through his father's hands; one of his earliest known works is a sketch of a horse's head after van Dyck (sold London, Christie's, 16 June 1970). His early 'genius to drawing of horses' was, according to George Vertue, compromised by 'modish extravagances' through living 'gay high and loosely' and because he 'never studied enough to paint or colour well'. Elsewhere, however, it was recorded that by 1739 he was 'reckoned the finest draughtsman in his way [of horses, hounds etc.] in the whole world' (Universal Spectator, 1739), and he was certainly preferred to his chief rival, John Wootton, by many sporting patrons. Among his employers was William Jolliffe MP, of Ammerdown. Though many of his paintings are either derivative of Wootton or simply inept, or both, others are characterized by a self-conscious stylistic naivety in which meticulous attention to detail and eerily static compositions combine to create curiously memorable images of some apparent sophistication.
Jusepe Martinez
1600-1682
Benjamin Cam Norton
British, 1835-1900