Francisco De Goya: Quotes about painting

“His Excellency Don José Palafox [famous Spanish general, who recaptured Zaragoza from the French army) called me to go to Zaragoza this week in order to see and examine the ruins of that city, with the intention that I should paint the glories of its inhabitants, something from which I cannot be excused because the glory of my native land [Goya was born in Zaragoza] interests me so much.”

Francisco De Goya

letter c. 1809, to the Secretary of the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003; p. 282 & note 13
Goya gave in this way his excuse he gave the Secretary of the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, explaining why he could not be at the inauguration of the portrait, Goya had made of king Ferdinand VII, recently
1800s

Painting

“[T]here are no rules in painting and.... the oppression, or servile obligation, of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the Young who profess this very difficult art that approaches the divine more than any other.”

Francisco De Goya

In a report, 1792 which Goya was invited to write to the Academy of San Fernando on the subject of teaching art; as cited by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 126
at the end of 1792 Goya abruptly broke off work on his tapestry designs and left Madrid for the South. In Jan. 1793 he wrote a note: 'had been ill for two months and asked permission to stop designing and go to Sevilla to recuperate'. There are no more letters written by Goya then; no one can say more about this crisis / illness, according to Robert Hughes
1790s

Art , Study , Painting

“I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches... For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time… No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters.... and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting.”

Francisco De Goya

from his Letters 263-264. circa 1801; in Goya, A life in Letters, edited and introduced by Sarah Simmons; translations by Philip Troutman, London, Pimlico, 2004
Early 1801 - Goya was then First Painter of the Court - the artist is sent to check the results of some restoration operated on works belonging to the Spanish crown. His 263-264 letters reveal the total opposition of Goya against any cleaning or restoration of older paintings
1800s

Change , Time , Parting , Painting

“I am now Painter to the King with fifteen thousand reales [a year].... the King sent out an order to Bayeu and Maella to search out the best two painters that could be found, to paint the cartoons for tapestries. Bayeu proposed his brother, and Maella proposed me. Their advice was put before the king, and the favor was done, and I had no idea of what was happening to me.”

Francisco De Goya

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3915977, June 1786; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 81
Goya was already forty then; the four painters should paint the designs of all the new tapestries for the royal palace; their designs were then woven in the Royal Tapestry Factory
1780s

Search , Idea , Painting

“[the painting 'Yard with Lunatics' shows].. a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks; (it is a scene I witnessed at first hand in Zaragoza).”

Francisco De Goya

letter to his friend Bernardo de Iriarte, 7 Jan, 1794; as quoted by Jane Kromm, in The art of frenzy, 2002, p. 194 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_with_Lunatics
The painting 'Yard with Lunatics' (Spanish: Corral de locos) is a small oil-on-tinplate painting completed by Goya between 1793 and 1794; Goya says here that the painting was informed by scenes of institutions he witnessed in his youth in Zaragoza
1790s

Fight , Painting

“.. As a matter of fact, last winter I was painting on ivory; I've already got a collection of forty studies, but these are original miniatures, of a kind I've never seen before, entirely done with the point of a brush, with details that are closer to the brushwork of Velásquez than to that of Mengs.”

Francisco De Goya

1820s

Study , Winter , Painting

“To occupy my imagination, which has been depressed by dwelling on my misfortunes, and to compensate at least in part for some of the considerable expenses I have incurred, I set myself to painting a series of cabinet pictures.... they depict themes that cannot usually be dealt with in commissioned works, where 'capricho' [whim] and invention do not have much of a role to play. I thought of sending them to the academy..”

Francisco De Goya

letter to his friend Bernardo de Iriarte, deputy of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, Jan. 1794; as quoted in 'Goya and Iriarte', in Goya his Life and Work, P. Gassier and J. Wilson, 1971, p. 382
cabinet paintings were small portable paintings, which did not need a lot of wall-space and could be moved around at the owner's whim. Goya's famous series 'Caprichos' really begin after physical and probably mental breakdown in 1792. He was 46, and thereafter deaf until his death in 1828
1790s

Imagination , Parting , Painting

“Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta for the skill and great care with which he saved his [Goya's] life in his acute and dangerous illness, suffered at the end of 1819, at the age of seventy-tree years. He painted this in 1820.”

Francisco De Goya

inscription by Goya, 1820
Goya painted this long inscription in 1820, - in the tradition of the ex-votos in the churches - in the double-portrait, [of his friend, and of Goya himself as the patient], he made of his doctor Eugenio Garciá Arrieta who helped him in 1819 with a severe illness
1820s

Life , Age , Tree , Suffering

“The author [Goya] is convinced that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so, although criticism is usually taken to be exclusively the business of literature.”

Francisco De Goya

1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Error , Literature , Business , Painting

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

Life , Dance , Painting , Personality

“Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons.”

Francisco De Goya

the announcement in the paper of 6. Feb. 1799 was necessary because Goya was unable to find regular bookshops to sell the Capricho-prints. That year 300 sets were printed, which meant 24.000 prints!! - without the mis-prints and proof-prints.
The Caprichos was the name of a serie of eigthy prints that Goya entitled 'Los Caprichos'; Goya made them in a combination of regular etching & aquatint technique. Etching gave lines by scratching with needles in the copper-plate. Aquatint gave fields of flat watercolor wash, a uniform tone composed of tiny grains and speckles rather than lines (as Robert Hughes explains) in the same book, p. 176-177/207-208)
1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Nature , Universe , Painting , Personality