The Artist Moves to France
Goya arrived in Bordeaux in late June 1824, "deaf, old, clumsy, and weak, and without knowing a word of French and without bringing a servant (which no one needs more than he), and so content and so desirous of seeing the world," as a compatriot reported. Three days later, Goya was off to Paris, where he spent the summer. He explored the city and undoubtedly looked at works on view by Ingres, thirty-four years his junior, and Delacroix, who owned some of Goya's prints. There is no record of his having met them or his reactions to their work. As a gift for a Spanish Liberal expatriate and businessman, Joaquín María de Ferrer (who also commissioned featured portraits by the artist), Goya painted a small, powerful bullfight that emphasizes the brutal, sacrificial aspects of the spectacle.

In late September, Goya settled in Bordeaux and was joined by Leocadia Weiss and her children, who remained with him until his death. (His legitimate family, made up of his son and heir, Javier, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson, stayed in Madrid; the two families would later clash over Goya's estate.) Goya's first sitter in Bordeaux was the poet and playwright Leandro Fernández de Moratín, one of his closest comrades, whose piquant letters to friends back home provide evocative details of the painter's life in the cosmopolitan seaport. As is characteristic of the portraits of this period, the poet's generous form is arranged in a simple composition, with an emphasis on silhouette and set against a neutral ground. Painted in somber tones and freely brushed, the work focuses on the inner spirit of the man as reflected in his thoughtful, melancholic expression.

New Risks at 80
Goya painted other portraits in Bordeaux, mainly of his expatriate friends, but, at eighty, he also was eager to take risks and explore new media. In a letter to Joaquín María de Ferrer, Goya described some of his recent experiments and added: "You should thank me for these few bad words because I have no eyesight, pulse, pen or ink. I lack everything and the only thing I have in excess is willpower." The painter was referring to his exploration of the art of miniature painting during the winter of 1824-25. Goya's
improvised technique and subject matter have little in common with conventional miniatures. He covered a tiny ivory chip with carbon black and let a drop of water fall on it to create shapes, which he then developed into figures
with touches of watercolor; then he scratched lines into the surface with a sharp implement. Perhaps an old procuress and her young charge would emerge, as in Maja and Celestina (above), or a man delousing himself.
These marvelous little improvisations share the subject matter of the Caprichos; nine of them have been brought together in this exhibition.

Goya Adopts Latest Technology
Lithography had only been invented at the end of the eighteenth century, and Goya had tried it without great success before leaving Madrid. With the Bordeaux lithographer Cyprien Gaulon, whose superb portrait is in the show, Goya now mastered the technique, creating the famous series of four large prints depicting scenes of bullfighting known as The Bulls of Bordeaux. As with his miniatures, he adapted the technique to his own ends. He placed the lithographic stone upright on an easel and created the scene with a blunt crayon and then scraped away areas to make highlights.

The furious energy of Goya's late style is evident in such works as Spanish Entertainment from the Bulls of Bordeaux, a scene of foolhardy amateurs play at being toreros. Nowhere is Goya's irrepressible verve more evident than in his drawings, the favorite medium of his last years. The largest section of the exhibition is devoted to works from his two final private albums. These personal (as opposed to preparatory) drawings, which Goya had begun to create not long after losing his hearing in the early 1790s, have been described as a form of "talking to himself"; in them he put down his unedited thoughts, observations, and fantasies.

In Bordeaux, Goya switched from the more precise medium of pen, brush, and ink to greasy black crayon, undoubtedly inspired by his work in lithography. This soft, forgiving medium allowed for greater breadth of execution and velvety tonal effects and may have compensated for the artist's diminishing eyesight and manual dexterity. On his walks through the city, Goya took note of its singular inhabitants, such as legless old beggars or fairground figures, as seen at left in Feria en Bordeaux (Fair in Bordeaux) (The Female Giant), or entertaining characters, such as a reckless roller skater. His style is energetic and cartoonish rather than classical, with bodies in exaggerated poses and states of emotion. He also returned to past themes, such as madness and witchcraft, and made puzzle pictures in which the meaning is left deliberately ambiguous. Works such as Man on a Swing directly address the leitmotif that underlies all of his last works: the gravity defying forces of creativity, humor, and perseverance against the entropy of old age-the final testament of one who had seen it all and was, in his own words, "still learning."

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Basic Information
General Information Phone: (212) 288-0700
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Subway: #6 local (on Lexington Avenue) to 68th Street station; Bus: M1, M2, M3, and M4 southbound on Fifth Avenue to 72nd Street and northbound on Madison Avenue to 70th Street
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