Francisco Goya
I chose Francisco Goya (1746-1828) because of his compelling, raw portraits and his agonized war etchings. He was so firmly enmeshed in the culture of art that when I was just starting to pay attention to art history, I got him mixed up with Velasquez and Picasso, to name just two. His biographer Robert Hughes says “He was the first modern artist and the last old master.”
Goya was apprenticed to a painter at 13. At 28 in Madrid, he began a 39 year career as a court painter for the Bourbon royalty. Over his life, his style shifted from lighthearted to pessimistic. This was partly due to his surroundings, and partly to his personal life.
His career started during the enlightened reign of Charles III (1759-88) of Spain, In these halcyon early years, Goya’s paintings were chipper and relatively simple. He painted frescoes for churches, made cartoons for tapestries, and became involved with the “ilustrados” (“Enlighteneds”) of the Spanish aristocracy.
In the turbulent years around the turn of the 18th century, Goya saw the fall of the French monarchy, the atrocities of Bonaparte in Spain, and the Inquisition of Ferdinand VII. In 1793, at 46, an illness left him deaf, and in 1812 his wife died. By then he was exploring the horrors of war in prints and paintings, although he continued to paint portraits of the aristocracy. His final paintings, horrific, almost Expressionistic works, done in an isolated country house, are called the Black Paintings.
Goya is now called a Spanish Romantic, who “wanted to make images that compel a moral understanding of ordinary and terrible things.” The Romantic Movement was a response to the more arid Enlightenment which glorified rationality. In contrast, Romantics turned to nature, intuition, and the darker emotions of terror and awe (this was the age of Frankenstein and Dracula).
He was an experimenter, a man who challenged conventional mores. He experimented with scribbles, with aquatint, with shocking subjects. One of Goya’s famous shockers is his Portrait of The Family of Charles IV (1800-01), a 9 x 11 foot canvas showing some seriously ugly royals, standing under a painting of Lot and his daughters. Was this a stab at the corruption and decay of the court? Or did Goya make his subjects look handsomer than they really were, and was he simply not interested in showing anything but power and dignity? I look at some of his other works and see the same stiffness of stance and slight awkwardness of form and think that was simply his style. His subjects knew what he painted like and got what they expected. He wasn’t fired, anyway.
Goya was apprenticed to a painter at 13. At 28 in Madrid, he began a 39 year career as a court painter for the Bourbon royalty. Over his life, his style shifted from lighthearted to pessimistic. This was partly due to his surroundings, and partly to his personal life.
His career started during the enlightened reign of Charles III (1759-88) of Spain, In these halcyon early years, Goya’s paintings were chipper and relatively simple. He painted frescoes for churches, made cartoons for tapestries, and became involved with the “ilustrados” (“Enlighteneds”) of the Spanish aristocracy.
In the turbulent years around the turn of the 18th century, Goya saw the fall of the French monarchy, the atrocities of Bonaparte in Spain, and the Inquisition of Ferdinand VII. In 1793, at 46, an illness left him deaf, and in 1812 his wife died. By then he was exploring the horrors of war in prints and paintings, although he continued to paint portraits of the aristocracy. His final paintings, horrific, almost Expressionistic works, done in an isolated country house, are called the Black Paintings.
Goya is now called a Spanish Romantic, who “wanted to make images that compel a moral understanding of ordinary and terrible things.” The Romantic Movement was a response to the more arid Enlightenment which glorified rationality. In contrast, Romantics turned to nature, intuition, and the darker emotions of terror and awe (this was the age of Frankenstein and Dracula).
He was an experimenter, a man who challenged conventional mores. He experimented with scribbles, with aquatint, with shocking subjects. One of Goya’s famous shockers is his Portrait of The Family of Charles IV (1800-01), a 9 x 11 foot canvas showing some seriously ugly royals, standing under a painting of Lot and his daughters. Was this a stab at the corruption and decay of the court? Or did Goya make his subjects look handsomer than they really were, and was he simply not interested in showing anything but power and dignity? I look at some of his other works and see the same stiffness of stance and slight awkwardness of form and think that was simply his style. His subjects knew what he painted like and got what they expected. He wasn’t fired, anyway.
The Third of May
Another of Goya’s famous shockers is “The Third of May,” showing Napoleon’s troops slaughtering unarmed people near Madrid. Unlike the ubiquitous “glorious war” paintings of the era, this one is simply pitiful. You see the faces of the victims, and the backs of their executioners. There is no hope, and no sense to it.
Unlike his royal portraits, this painting is painterly. There are blurry parts, clumsy parts, indistinct areas. Hillsides wouldn't have been yellow in the dark before modern spotlights, but this one is.
I think this painting is a masterpiece because of the sense of immediacy. Unlike, say, the stateliness of Egyptian paintings, "The Third of May" has no complete figure in it, no recognizable person except the horrified white-shirted victim. The mannered classical restraint of previous eras has been replaced by paint which almost screams off the canvas.
Three Gentlemen and Ladies Dancing
Part of the Proverbs series
A Way of Flying
Number 13 of the Proverbs series.
How to Draw Bodies Lesson
Lesson Title: The Human Body
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Key Vocabulary: Names of body parts (possibly important for K - 2), names of body attitudes (possibly important for the Asperger's student).
Visuals/Resources: Manga book on bodies, my reference books on human anatomy
Connections to Prior Knowledge: All students draw people, until they reach around 3rd grade and realize that they "can't." Well, they can.
Content Objectives: 1. Understand body proportions, 2. be able to reproduce poses from exemplars, and 3. create a character.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Yoga lesson. "The crow," "The bow and arrow," "downward dog," etc. Watch what your body does. Where are your hands in relation to your thighs? How big are your feet in relation to your legs? Etc.
2. 15-minute stations: cartoons of different yoga poses, memorize if older student.
3. 30-minute masterwork session: draw a person in an interesting pose that reflects what the person is "like."
Supplies: Teacher-made exemplars.
Review/Assessment: Art journal
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when sharing journal.
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Key Vocabulary: Names of body parts (possibly important for K - 2), names of body attitudes (possibly important for the Asperger's student).
Visuals/Resources: Manga book on bodies, my reference books on human anatomy
Connections to Prior Knowledge: All students draw people, until they reach around 3rd grade and realize that they "can't." Well, they can.
Content Objectives: 1. Understand body proportions, 2. be able to reproduce poses from exemplars, and 3. create a character.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Yoga lesson. "The crow," "The bow and arrow," "downward dog," etc. Watch what your body does. Where are your hands in relation to your thighs? How big are your feet in relation to your legs? Etc.
2. 15-minute stations: cartoons of different yoga poses, memorize if older student.
3. 30-minute masterwork session: draw a person in an interesting pose that reflects what the person is "like."
Supplies: Teacher-made exemplars.
Review/Assessment: Art journal
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when sharing journal.
Goya Lesson
Lesson Title: Goya and the Human Body
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Key Vocabulary: Goya, Court painter, proverbs.
Visuals/Resources: Web images of Goya's proverbs series, especially the two images depicted above.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: See previous lesson.
Content Objectives: 1. Understand body proportions,
2. be able to reproduce poses from exemplars, and
3. create a Goya-style scene.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Have two students pose together, have other students remark on their proportions
2. 15-minute stations: cartoons of different body poses, memorize if older student. At least one station with books on Goya and a Goya image to copy.
3. 30-minute masterwork session: draw a scene such as people flying or dancing in Goya's etching style.
Supplies: Teacher-made exemplars.
Review/Assessment: Art journal
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when sharing journal.
Grade: K - 9 self-contained classroom
Key Vocabulary: Goya, Court painter, proverbs.
Visuals/Resources: Web images of Goya's proverbs series, especially the two images depicted above.
Connections to Prior Knowledge: See previous lesson.
Content Objectives: 1. Understand body proportions,
2. be able to reproduce poses from exemplars, and
3. create a Goya-style scene.
Meaningful Activities: 1. Have two students pose together, have other students remark on their proportions
2. 15-minute stations: cartoons of different body poses, memorize if older student. At least one station with books on Goya and a Goya image to copy.
3. 30-minute masterwork session: draw a scene such as people flying or dancing in Goya's etching style.
Supplies: Teacher-made exemplars.
Review/Assessment: Art journal
Language Objective: Use appropriate vocabulary when sharing journal.