Francisco Goya: Old Man

Spanish painter Francisco de Goya

In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness which left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book Julia Blackburn follows Francisco Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw happening in the world around him into his visionary paintings, drawings and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Francisco Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who was with him to the end.

Julia Blackburn

Julia Blackburn writes of the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head. Francisco Goya never stopped working, producing paintings 'between two cigarettes', and Blackburn captures his ferocious energy, his passion and his genius.

Old Man Goya

Old Man Goya by Julia Blackburn
Knopf Publishing Group, 2002

Francisco Goya by Werner Hofmann

Werner Hofmann places Goya's paintings, drawings and prints in an historical context, revealing the specific character of each phase of the artist's life and work. Werner Hofmann discusses 'the glory and the pain of faith' evinced by Francisco Goya's early work, the artist's parabolic representation of the threat posed by the French Revolution, his dramatic documentation of the French occupation of Spain, his variations on cruelty in the Horrors of War etchings, and the faith in art apparent in his late work. Hofmann also relates the artist and his work to contemporary intellectual developments, drawing comparisons with writers, critics and philosophers from Goethe to William Blake and the Marquis de Sade.

Francisco Goya

Goya by Werner Hofmann
Thames & Hudson, 2003

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Francisco Goya: Black Paintings