Francisco de Goya

Lady on a dark background.

Clasificación
Lady on a dark background.
Datos Generales
Cronología
1826 - 1828
Dimensiones
191 x 122 mm
Técnica y soporte
Aguatinta, aguafuerte y bruñidor
Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
Documented work
Ficha: realización/revisión
22 Feb 2011 / 15 Jun 2023
Inventario
225
Historia

This group of four engravings made in Bordeaux, the last ones Goya executed, constitute a mini-series called "Last Caprices" or "New Caprices" (a term coined by Eleanor Sayre), although they have nothing to do with the series of 1799. They have been considered part of an unfinished series, or else single works complementary to the drawing albums produced in Bordeaux (and in particular Album H). Perhaps these prints are the "best ideas" to which Goya alludes in a letter to his friend Joaquín María Ferrer, exiled in Paris, dated 1825, in response to the latter's suggestion to reprint the Caprices.

A good technical mastery can be appreciated, as well as the mixture of delicacy and vigour, despite the artist's advanced age. Some authors have pointed out the possible influence of the simultaneous practice of lithography, as the traces of the strokes and profiles are softer than in his earlier etchings.

Similar compositions are engraved on the backs of the plates, open only to etching and which seem to be copies of three drawings from Album H (nos. 22, 31 and 58) which served as a reference for the compositions on the front. Two of these reverses, Lady on a light background. (reverse of Lady on a dark background.) and The Embossed Man (idem of Andalusian Smuggler ), are unanimously considered to have been executed by another hand, and there are doubts about the third, Old Woman Swinging (idem of Old Man Swinging).

Only period proofs of Old Man Swinging and The Blind Singer survive, while only posthumous prints exist of Lady on a Dark Background and Andalusian Smuggler. Except for the plate of The Blind Singer, which belonged to Paul Lefort, the others were acquired in 1859 from Mariano Goya by the English diplomat John Savile Lumley, who asked the Calcografía Nacional to print the front and back of his three plates, except for Andalusian Smuggler, due to the poor condition of the plate. 

In 1926 the three plates were acquired by the firm of Colnaghi (London), who made an edition at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, using different types of antique and modern paper. In 1938 the plates passed to Philip Hofer (Cambridge, Massachusetts), for whom Ture Bengtz made a print in 1954 and Russell T. Limbach another in 1960. Hofer finally donated the plates in 1970 to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where they are now kept. In 1971 Eleanor Sayre published a catalogue raisonné and twenty-five copies of that edition included a numbered edition of six prints (obverse and reverse) by Emiliano Sorini (New York).

Análisis artístico

In the engraving we see a woman of the maja type, with a mantilla and arms raised, in a provocative attitude, surrounded by heads (demons on the prowl?) looming in the dark background. Possible portrait of Leocadia Zorrilla de Weiss, Goya's partner at the time.

Goya started with an etching, shading with aquatint and then saving the white parts (face, skirt and shoes) with the burnisher.

There is a preparatory drawing, Maja, included in Album H and now in the Prado Museum.

Exposiciones
  • Exposición de la obra grabada de Goya
    Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte
    Madrid
    1928
    catalogue by Miguel Velasco Aguirre
  • Grabados y dibujos de Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    Biblioteca Nacional
    Madrid
    1946
    catalogue Elena Páez Ríos
  • De grafiek van Goya
    Rijksmuseum Rijksprentenkabinet
    Amsterdam
    1970
    from November 13th 1970 to January 17th 1971
  • El arte de Goya
    Museo de Arte Occidental de Tokio
    Tokyo
    1971
    from 16th 1971 to January 23th 1972. Exhibited also at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, January 29th to March 15th 1972.
  • Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional. Exposición de grabados y dibujos en el sesquicentenario de su muerte
    Biblioteca Nacional
    Madrid
    1978
    May - June 1978
  • Goya. Das Zeitalter der Revolucionen. Kunst um 1800 (1980 – 1981)
    Hamburger Kunsthalle
    Hamburg
    1980
  • Goya grabador
    Fundación Juan March
    Madrid
    1994
    consultant editors Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Julián Gállego, from January 14th to March 20th 1994
  • Ydioma universal: Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    Biblioteca Nacional
    Madrid
    1996
    from September 19th to December 15th 1996
  • Goya y Moratín [En Burdeos, 1824 – 1828]
    Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao
    Bilbao
    1998
    consultant editor Françoise García
Bibliografía
  • HARRIS, Tomás
    Goya engravings and lithographs, vol. I y II.
    OxfordBruno Cassirer
    1964
    vol. II, 1983, cat. 30-35, pp.51-59
  • GASSIER, Pierre y WILSON, Juliet
    Vie et ouvre de Francisco de Goya
    ParísOffice du livre
    1970
    pp.345-349, cat.1823-1829
  • SAYRE, Eleanor
    Late Caprichos of Goya, Fragments from a Serie
    New YorkPhilip Hofer Books
    1971
  • SAYRE, Eleanor
    The Changing image: Prints by Francisco Goya
    BostonMuseum of Fine Arts
    1974
  • GASSIER, Pierre
    Dibujos de Goya, 2 vols
    BarcelonaNoguer
    1975
    pp. 573-648
  • HOFMANN, Werner (ed.)
    Goya, Das Zeitalter de Revolutionen. 1789-1830
    HamburgPrestel-Verlag Münche und Hamburger Kunsthalle
    1980
    pp. 307-308
  • SANTIAGO, Elena M. (coordinadora)
    Catálogo de las estampas de Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    MadridMinisterio de Educación y Cultura, Biblioteca Nacional
    1996
    pp.53-54, cat.72-76A
  • WILSON-BAREU, Juliet
    Goya's prints: the Tomás Harris collection in the British Museum
    LondonBritish Museum Publications
    1996
  • SANTIAGO PÁEZ, Elena y WILSON-BAREAU, Juliet (comisarias)
    Ydioma universal: Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    MadridBiblioteca Nacional, Sociedad Estatal Goya 96 y Lunwerg
    1996
    pp.290-293
  • CARRETE PARRONDO, Juan
    Goya. Estampas. Grabado y litografía
    BarcelonaElecta ediciones
    2007
    pp. 44-45, 347 y 374, núm. 283
Palabras clave
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