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Lot Essay
In June 1824, the seventy-eight year old Goya arrived in France having obtained permission from King Fernando VII to 'take the mineral waters at Plombières in order to diminish the illness and attacks which trouble him at his advanced age'. As Bareau-Wilson and Mena Marqués point out (see catalogue of the exhibition, Goya: Truth and Fantasy, The Small Paintings, Madrid, Prado and London, Royal Academy of Arts and elsewhere, 1994, p. 323), Goya was also no doubt keen to leave the intolerably oppressive Spanish regime.
After a visit to doctors in Paris, he settled in Bordeaux, where his old friend Leandro Fernández de Moratín and other Spanish exiles were living, and where he was to stay until his death four years later. There he set up home with Doña Leocadia Zorrilla, a relative of his daughter-in-law, with whom he had been living in Spain, and whose daughter Rosario was probably Goya's child.
On 20 December 1925 he wrote to his friend Joaquín Maria Ferrer 'last winter I painted on ivory and I have a collection of nearly forty exercises, ('ensayos'), but they are original miniatures which I have never seen the like of before because the whole is made up of points and things which look more like Velázquez's brushwork than that of Men[g]s. I have neither eyesight, pulse, pen or ink. I lack everything and the only thing I have in excess is will-power'.
In these 'nearly forty' ensayos, in stark contrast to the precise, finely-wrought traditional technique of miniature-painting, Goya created a wholly original approach to this art form. The artist Antonio Brugada's accounts of Goya's new techniques, described in Laurent Matheron's 1857 biography of Goya, relate in great detail his method in painting these miniatures: 'He blackened the ivory plaque and let fall on it a drop of water which removed part of the black ground as it spread out, tracing random light areas. Goya took advantage of these traces and always turned them into something original and unexpected. The little works were still in the vein of the Caprichos; today they would be very much sought after, if the dear man had not wiped off many of them in order to economise on the ivory'. This technique of working his miniatures from dark to light is particularly effective in the present picture which is dominated by the large areas of translucent white on the clothing of the two moors, articulated by bold yet simple brushstrokes that form the outlines, and 'look more like Velázquez's brushwork than that of Men[g]s.'
Another favourite trick of the artist in these miniatures was to apply small, often quite transparent, washes of blue or red to highlight certain features, a technique used to such expressive effect on the faces of the Orientals.
Of the original 'nearly forty' miniatures executed in this revolutionary technique by Goya, the precise whereabouts is known of about fourteen, including the present, newly-rediscovered picture, and the Judith and Holofernes, sold at Christie's, New York, 31 Jan. 1997, lot 219 ($937,500). At least another four are known only from photographs (see Gudiol, op. cit., I, nos. 738-55). The dimensions of the miniatures vary from the largest of a Woman (Gudiol, ibid., no. 742) which measures 9 x 9.5cm. to the smallest, Two Children Reading, which measures 5.2 x 5.3cm. (Gudiol, ibid., no. 749). The present picture was one of four sold at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris in 1937. The whereabouts of two others in this group, a Kneeling Woman and a Man and Young Boy, is unknown, whilst the last A Woman, her clothes blowing in the wind is listed as being in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Kirk Askew, Jr., New York.
In subject matter, the miniatures seem to have little in common with each other. They range from the extreme violence of the Judith and Holofernes to the casual, but intimate, depiction of Two Orientals conversing. What they all have in common is the depiction of a single moment in time, vigorously expressed in a startlingly original way by an artist nearing the end of his long life.
After a visit to doctors in Paris, he settled in Bordeaux, where his old friend Leandro Fernández de Moratín and other Spanish exiles were living, and where he was to stay until his death four years later. There he set up home with Doña Leocadia Zorrilla, a relative of his daughter-in-law, with whom he had been living in Spain, and whose daughter Rosario was probably Goya's child.
On 20 December 1925 he wrote to his friend Joaquín Maria Ferrer 'last winter I painted on ivory and I have a collection of nearly forty exercises, ('ensayos'), but they are original miniatures which I have never seen the like of before because the whole is made up of points and things which look more like Velázquez's brushwork than that of Men[g]s. I have neither eyesight, pulse, pen or ink. I lack everything and the only thing I have in excess is will-power'.
In these 'nearly forty' ensayos, in stark contrast to the precise, finely-wrought traditional technique of miniature-painting, Goya created a wholly original approach to this art form. The artist Antonio Brugada's accounts of Goya's new techniques, described in Laurent Matheron's 1857 biography of Goya, relate in great detail his method in painting these miniatures: 'He blackened the ivory plaque and let fall on it a drop of water which removed part of the black ground as it spread out, tracing random light areas. Goya took advantage of these traces and always turned them into something original and unexpected. The little works were still in the vein of the Caprichos; today they would be very much sought after, if the dear man had not wiped off many of them in order to economise on the ivory'. This technique of working his miniatures from dark to light is particularly effective in the present picture which is dominated by the large areas of translucent white on the clothing of the two moors, articulated by bold yet simple brushstrokes that form the outlines, and 'look more like Velázquez's brushwork than that of Men[g]s.'
Another favourite trick of the artist in these miniatures was to apply small, often quite transparent, washes of blue or red to highlight certain features, a technique used to such expressive effect on the faces of the Orientals.
Of the original 'nearly forty' miniatures executed in this revolutionary technique by Goya, the precise whereabouts is known of about fourteen, including the present, newly-rediscovered picture, and the Judith and Holofernes, sold at Christie's, New York, 31 Jan. 1997, lot 219 ($937,500). At least another four are known only from photographs (see Gudiol, op. cit., I, nos. 738-55). The dimensions of the miniatures vary from the largest of a Woman (Gudiol, ibid., no. 742) which measures 9 x 9.5cm. to the smallest, Two Children Reading, which measures 5.2 x 5.3cm. (Gudiol, ibid., no. 749). The present picture was one of four sold at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris in 1937. The whereabouts of two others in this group, a Kneeling Woman and a Man and Young Boy, is unknown, whilst the last A Woman, her clothes blowing in the wind is listed as being in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Kirk Askew, Jr., New York.
In subject matter, the miniatures seem to have little in common with each other. They range from the extreme violence of the Judith and Holofernes to the casual, but intimate, depiction of Two Orientals conversing. What they all have in common is the depiction of a single moment in time, vigorously expressed in a startlingly original way by an artist nearing the end of his long life.