What a way to end the year. Talented, yes. A bit dark, definitely. I have made notations are parts of his bio that you may want to leave out for the younger set and get back to focusing on the warm and cool color palette and how those colors make them feel.
There is only one version of the lesson plan here it is as a PDF (1266.5K)
Francisco Goya, considered to be “the Father of Modern Art,” began his painting career just after the late Baroque period. In expressing his thoughts and feelings frankly, as he did, he became the pioneer of new artistic tendencies which were to come to fruition in the 19th century. As an artist, Goya was by temperament far removed from the classicals. In a few works he approached Classical style, but in the greater part of his work the Romantic triumphed.
LIFE and WORK:
Goya was born on 30 March 1746, in a very poor village called Fuendetodos, near Saragossa, in Aragon. Goya’s father was a gilder. He began his artistic studies at the age of 13 when he was employed as a young teenager under the mediocre artist Jose Luzan. Goya learned to draw from him and in this time he copied prints of several masters. At the age of 17 he went to Madrid. His style was influenced by two painters – Tiepolo and Antonio Raphael Mengs. In 1763 he entered a competition at the Royal Accademy of San Fernando and failed as he did in the year 1766. In 1770 he went to Rome and survived by living off his works of art.
In April of 1771 he participated in a competition held by the Academy of Parma introducing himself as a pupil of Francisco Bayeu. By the end of 1771, Goya was back in Saragossa, where he received his first official commission, the frescoes in the Cathedral of El Pilar. In 1773 Goya married Josefa Bayeu. In 1774, the German artist Anton Raphael Mengs summoned Goya to Madrid to paint cartoons for tapestries for the Royal Factory of Santa Barbara. Under the direction first of Mengs, and later of Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maella, Goya executed over 60 tapestry cartoons between 1775 and 1792. In 1780, Goya was elected a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando. In 1780-81, he worked on the frescoes of El Pilar in Saragossa. On his return to Madrid he received the royal invitation to paintfor the newly built church of San Francisco el Grande. In 1785, a year after the paintings were first shown to the public, Goya was appointed Deputy Director of Painting in the Academy.
In 1786, he became a court painter. In 1783-85, Goya painted a number of portraits of the influential persons of his time: the portrait of the Chief Minister of State, the Count of Floridablanca, in which Goya himself appears; the family portrait of the Infante Don Luis, the King’s brother, with himself again in the picture; the court architect, Ventura Rodriguez. In 1785, he was commissioned for a series of portraits of offices of the Banco Nacional de San Carlos. In these early official portraits, Goya adopted conventional XVIII century poses. His portrait of Charles III in Hunting Costume is based directly on Velasquez’s paintings of royal huntsmen. After the death of Charles III in 1788The new King raised him to the rank of Court Painter in 1789. After the death of Francisco Bayeu in 1795, Goya succeeded his former teacher as Director of Painting in the Academy and in 1799 was appointed First Court Painter. In 1799, Goya published the series of 80 etchings called Los Caprichos.
He later, in 1814, recorded the events in two of the most famous of his paintings The Second of May, 1808: The Charge of Mamelukes and The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid. He made his personal record of the war in expressive and fearful drawings Desastres de la Guerra, which were later used for a series of 82 etchings, which were published only in 1863. Goya received two important ecclesiastical commissions for St. Justa and St. Rufina, painted in 1817 for the Seville Cathedral, and for The Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz painted in 1819 for the church of the Escuelas Pías de San Antón in Madrid. After the declaration of amnesty Goya left Spain. Except for two short visits to Madrid in 1826 and 1827, the painter remained in France, mainly in Bordeaux, for the rest of his life. He died in Bordeaux on 16 April, 1828.
Goya's wife, Josefa Bayeu de Goya
The Seesaw
Portrait of the Duchess of Alba - they had a special relationship. Detail shows a ring on her hand with the name, "Goya" and in the sand, his name.
Portrait of the Family of Charles IV - he is in the left, didn't like this family much. He distorted them a bit, or else he chose not to make them more flattering. You can see the one daughter was painted looking away so you don't even see her face. Needless to say, he was not invited back for another commission.
A carnival or Mardi Gras type of atmosphere as shown by the large gestures, masks and costumes.
The Burial of the Sardine (Spanish: El entierro de la sardina) is an oil-on-panel painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, usually dated to the 1810s. The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event of a three-day carnival in Madrid ending on Ash Wednesday. (Ash Wednesday, in the Western Christian calendar, is the first day of Lent and occurs forty-six days (forty days not counting Sundays) before Easter. It is a moveable fast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter. It can occur as early as 4 February or as late as 10 March.)
Masked and disguised revellers are seen dancing their way to the banks of the Manzanares, where a ceremonial sardine will be buried. Goya does not illustrate the fish in the painting, nor the large doll made of straw, called a pelele, from which it hung; the centrepiece is the darkly grinning "King of the Carnival".
The Giane or The Colossus. Refer to script for part of this story.
The Village Bullfight
A bit dark. Notice the string on the bird's leg and the three cats anticipating a snack. The boy seems oblivious to what he is causing or doesn't seem to care.
