Francisco Goya
Regozijo (Mirth), c. 1819-23
The Hispanic Society of America, New York
The Courtauld exhibits Goya’s ‘Witches and Old Women’ The Courtauld Gallery presents a ground-breaking exhibition of Francisco Goya’s later works, reuniting the widely scattered pages of Goya’s Witches and Old Women Album. 26 February – 25 May 2015.]]>
Source: The Courtauld Gallery
The Courtauld Gallery presents a ground-breaking exhibition which reunites for the first timeall of the known drawings from one of Goya’s celebrated private albums. At the age of 50,the great Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828) suffered a nearfatalillness that left him deaf and profoundly changed his life and work. Alongside his publicrole as court painter to the Spanish crown, Goya began to create albums of drawings. Inthese albums the artist recorded his private ideas and thoughts through drawings that oftenexplore human nature at its most vulnerable – our dreams, nightmares, superstitions andmortality.
The albums were never intended to be seen beyond a small circle of friends. This gaveGoya the freedom to create images which range from the humorous, to the macabre and thebitingly satirical. He produced eight albums, (known by the letters A to H), each offering richinsights into the private world of his boundless imagination. Never before have any of thesealbums been reunited. This exhibition is the first to do so by bringing together all thedrawings from the Witches and Old Women Album.
All eight of Goya’s albums were broken up after his death in 1828 and their pages are nowscattered in museums and private collections. The original order of the Witches and OldWomen Album was lost and along with it an understanding as to whether it was developedas a single project or was the result of Goya’s accumulation of individual drawings. As aresult of close technical study by the curatorial team and contributing museums, theexhibition will present a reconstruction of the original sequence of the drawings, gainingvaluable new insights into the nature of Goya’s albums.
The Witches and Old Women Album is thought to have been made in 1819-23, the periodwhen Goya had acquired the property outside Madrid where he completed the famousmurals known as the Black Paintings. With its themes of witchcraft, dreams and nightmares,the album offers an important perspective on the development of Goya’s interest in old age,the fantastic and the diabolical. Above all, the drawings reveal his penetrating observation ofhuman nature. Goya’s insights were coloured by his experience of the turbulent years ofSpanish history, including the catastrophic war between Napoleon Bonaparte and theSpanish nation. In 1824, soon after the album is thought to have been completed, he leftSpain for exile in Bordeaux.
Related content
Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ at the Georgia Museum of Art (exhibition, 2012)
Follow us on:
