Goya's Career

Until about 1790, Goya followed a conventional career. He undertook academic study, travelled to Italy, and he painted religious and decorative commissions. By 1789 (the year of the French Revolution) he held important positions, at the Academy of painting, and as Court Painter to the newly enthroned King Carlos IV. Left permanently deaf following a traumatic illness, the darker side to his art began to emerge in a series of small paintings made while convalescing. They depict the nightmare visions and barbed attacks on his fellow men for which he is now celebrated.

The most famous examples are the so-called 'Black Paintings,' made in 1820 for the Quinta del Sordo,' (House of the Deaf Man) where Goya lived on the edge of Madrid. It is in the etchings, however, that the nightmare imagery is given its fullest treatment. Goya made 290 prints in separate bursts of activity that resulted in several great series of works: the Caprichos (1799), The Disasters of War (1810-20), the Tauromaquia (1816) and the Disparates (1816-23).