Francisco Goya y Lucientes : 1746-1828 [Paperback]

Janis Tomlinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 1999

Goya is sometimes called the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns, and his work has left a lasting impression on avant garde artists from Manet to Picasso. This paperback volume offers an introduction to Goya and covers all aspects of his work: oil, fresco, etching, lithography, chalk and pen. In his lifetime, Goya worked for some of the most prestigious Spanish patrons. For most of his career he was court painter, and yet he also produced some of the most compelling images of social unrest of the last century. The book opens with an introduction to the artistic milieu in Saragossa, where Goya received his earliest training. It moves on to explain the growth of his career in Madrid where he eventually became the most prominent painter at court before and after the French occupation of his country. Throughout the text, Goya's work is set in its political and social context. The work ends with a discussion of his influence on such artists as Manet, Ensor and Picasso.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This paperback edition of the award-winning study of the life and work of Goya is filled with the same fine reproductions as the original 1994 hardcover. Goya was one of Spain's greatest and most controversial painters, famous for incisive portraits and the "black" paintings of his later years. Scholars have often attributed Goya's progression from producing light-hearted court paintings to creating somber images of the Napoleonic wars to the artist's serious illness of 1792, which left him deaf. Writer Janis Tomlinson's aim here is to show a continuity in his work before and after the illness. She sees in Goya's vast output--at least 1,800 works--a vital drive to explore and exploit his personal creativity, which was strengthened by the deafness that cut him off from all but visual communication with the world. With detail supported by formidable research, Tomlinson presents Goya's life chronologically, analyzing his work from icons like the Naked Maya to his Los Caprichos series of etchings with their biting social satire and supernatural imaginings of a world turned upside down. The demonic intensity of Saturn Devouring His Son and Witches Sabbath, painted on the walls of his "Country House of a Deaf Man" at the end of his life, suggest to some the work of an embittered madman. Rather, these disturbing paintings reflect Goya's profound empathy for the victims of a predatory and unjust society--empathy that a modern audience readily shares. --John Stevenson

From Publishers Weekly

Modern interpretations of Goya as a political artist, proto-Romantic rebel, fantasist or realist capture partial truths about the protean Spanish painter, suggests Columbia University art history professor Tomlinson in this meticulous, sumptuously illustrated study featuring 210 color and 70 black-and-white plates. By viewing Goya's career as a lifelong experiment with image-making, she shows how his art became a self-perpetuating process as his works fed off one another. Tomlinson argues unpersuasively that Goya's royal portraits, usually seen as savage satires, actually evince sympathy for his often homely or awkward subjects. She is more successful in elucidating his kaleidoscopic view of evil in the Los Caprichos etchings, his innovative small-scale oils and his investigations of irrationality and destructiveness in scenes of madhouses, war, the Inquisition and popular spectacles.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (April 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714838446
• ISBN-13: 978-0714838441
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very nice monograph on Goya., January 18, 2000

By 

Charlise Tiee - See all my reviews

This review is from: Francisco Goya y Lucientes : 1746-1828 (Paperback)

Janis Tomlinson, the writer of this book, seems primarily concerned in showing that there is a continuity in Goya's work, that it did not suddenly change from light-hearted to dark after Goya went deaf. For the most part, I feel she achieved this end, I for one am convinced. I wish she wrote more on Goya's technique and his personal life, both of which she does not go into much. The 300 or so colour reproductions of Goya's work are excellent, and there are many good close-ups. Unfortunately, Goya produced around 1,800 works, so it is disappointing that only a fraction of them are in this book.