3 Goya Drawings auction at twice the pre-sale estimate Reuters has reported on the 4 million euro auction price that came together for the three Goya drawings put up at Christies (London) July 8, 2008:
The drawings, sold by Christie's in London, were last recorded at a Paris sale of works by the artist in 1877 and all come from Goya's celebrated private albums.
They were sold from a Swiss private collection and were in "exceptional" condition because they were never framed or exposed to light.
The top lot of the three was "Down They Come", from album D called "Witches and Women", depicting four women fighting as they fly through the air.
It sold for $4.5 million (2.28 million pounds), a world record at auction for a Goya work on paper and more than twice the pre-sale estimate.
Results from recent auctions at Christies:
[Lot 65] Goya Drawing: Bajan riñendo - They Go Down Fighting
£2,281,250 ($4,514,594 USD)
From a private Swiss Collection
9¼ x 5 5/8 in. (234 x 143 mm)
From Goya Album "F"
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos 1746-1828 Bordeaux) Bajan riñendo (They go down quarrelling) or Vision de bajar riñendo (Vision: going down quarrelling) inscribed by the artist in black chalk 'Vision de bajar riñendo' (over 'Bajan riñendo') and numbered by the artist '2' in black chalk (corrected by him to '1' or possibly '5' in pen and ink) at upper centre (album D) and with Madrazo's number '47' (Madrazo album III) in pen and ink at upper rightbrush and grey wash, scraping 9¼ x 5 5/8 in. (234 x 143 mm.)
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[Lot 67] Goya Drawing: Constable Lampiños stitched into a dead horse
"En Zaragoza à mediados del siglo pasado, me tieron à un alguacil llamado Lampiños, en el cuer- po de un Rocin muerto, y lo cosieron ; toda la noche se mantubo vivo"
£769,250 ($1,522,346 USD)
From a private Swiss Collection
8 1/8 x 5 5/8 in. (205 x 142 mm)
From Goya Album "F"
It is one of the very rare drawings from Goya's private albums to be extensively annotated by Goya in pen and ink. The inscription reads: 'In Saragossa around the middle of the last century they put a constable called Lampiños in the body of a dead nag; and he stayed alive for the whole night'. One can see only the horrified head of the man stitched inside the dead horse (could the word 'rocin' used by Goya be a conscious reference to Rocinante, Don Quixote's horse?) in front of a large arch, with excited dogs barking, attracted by the animal's entrails which lie on the ground.
Although lost from view since its appearance in the Paris 1877 sale, the drawing has recently been revealed as one of the very few described in his Journal by William Stirling, later Sir William Stirling Maxwell (1818-1878), the pioneering English collector and historian of Spanish art, following a visit to Javier Goya's home in 1849...
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[Lot 66] Goya Drawing: Repentance "Le repentir"
£959,650 ($1,899,147 USD)
From a private Swiss Collection
8¼ x 6 in. (210 x 152 mm)
From Goya Album "F"
On the present drawing, the inscription in pencil and in French is a much later addition ['Le repentir'], probably copied from the 1877 Paris sale catalogue. This sheet was page '47' of the original bound album but it bears two other numberings applied by Federico de Madrazo. This shows that when Madrazo took it out of one of Javier Goya's large albums he evidently moved it from one to another of his own three albums.
Drawings from Album F are usually executed only in brown wash but on this one Goya also extensively used a bright carbon-grey wash to suggest the forms of rocks and the interior of a cave in the background, conveying a remarkable sculptural quality to the figure. The drawing, brushed with breathtaking freedom, has a finished appearance which is unusual in sheets from Album F. For the head (which was originally positioned further forward) and the hands, Goya has used with extraordinary virtuosity a thinner brush (but no pen) and a brown ink lighter in tone.
...this one does not seem to be part of a sequence.
...Goya also treated the subject of repentance in one of his last religious pictures, executed around 1820, now in the Phillips Collection, Washington, The Repentant Saint Peter.
One other note, the price on an appparent first edition of Caprichos Author portrait page:
New York Times on Goya 'War' Exhibit; also El Coloso
An overview of the exhibit "Goya in Time of War" at the Prado in Madrid, written up by Michael Kimmelman at the New York Times. He provides a few thoughts about the near-official reduction of 'Colossus' to not-Goya, which seems to be the opinion carrying the day in all of the reports I have been reading. Kimmelman also touches on the general status of Goya in art, and gives an opinion on the exhibit's size and scope:
There was a little orchestrated flurry of drama here at the Prado a few sweltering days ago when the museum staged a news conference to announce what was hardly news: that “Colossus,” the famous, much reproduced Goya painting of a giant terrifying a landscape, may not be a Goya after all. Experts had been questioning its authorship for years. Expert or not, anybody who bothered to look closely at the picture and not just glance at Goya’s name on the label next to it, might have felt doubts.
...the show (it remains on view through July 13) is most memorable for pictures less famous, some rarely or never seen — still lifes and portraits — many from obscure collections, which Ms. Mena, its curator, has finagled for the occasion.
These include swift drawings like “Cuantas Baras?” (“How Many Yards?”). It’s a minor masterpiece of condensed, sardonic understatement, with a priest in a voluminous robe that, seen from the rear, gives him something of the creepy aspect of a bat. Then there are paintings like the portrait of Goya’s grandson Mariano, standing, rosy-cheeked, beside his toy carriage, an image as tender as the priest’s is ruthless.
That is the genius of Goya, not just to give equal weight to drawings and prints and paintings, to public and private pictures, but also to move so effortlessly between cruelty and love. The human condition was never whole, Goya made clear.
JUNE 27, 2008
"Colossus" by an assistant, claims Prado
The long-running dispute over 'Colossus' (also often titled "The Giant" or in the Spanish 'El Coloso') has been going on since at least 2001 when Goya scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau stated the painting was probably by someone else. Research on this has reached the point that the Prado is virtually giving this opinion "official" status:
The Colossus, painted early in the 19th Century, is traditionally attributed to Francisco Jose de Goya.
But museum experts now say that an investigation has revealed new information about the possible artist.
The revelations follow the identification of two initials - AJ - at the bottom of the canvas.
According to the Prado's investigators, those initials link the work to Asensio Juli, a friend and collaborator of Goya.
The painting depicts a giant walking through a landscape as people flee in panic.
The style of the Colossus was thought to be connected to paintings by the artist about Spain's war of independence against the French.
But, on the basis of their ongoing investigation, the Prado's specialists say they refute the view that Goya is the painter.
The identification of Asensio Juli seems to answer the caution given by Goya writer Sarah Symmons in our interview from 2006:
The question with Goya is that if he didn't paint works like The Colossus, the New York Majas, or the Black Paintings, then we have to find a new artist as their author. If there were such an anonymous artist who for various reasons wanted to keep their identity a secret, then it's a challenge to find out who they were. I know some people have suggested Javier Goya, but I don't believe that.
The UK Telegraph has more on the Prado announcement, written by Elisabeth Nash from Madrid:
... in an announcement set to raise a storm in the art world, the museum said yesterday that the celebrated El Coloso was not by the Spanish master after all, and was probably painted by a pupil in his studio.
In a devastating critique, the museum's chief Goya specialist said the painting, made during Napoleon's occupation of Spain after 1808 and long seen as one of the artist's most dramatic portrayals of the horrors of war, was "a pastiche".
"Stylistically, it is completely alien to Goya," said Manuela Mena, the Prado's senior Goya specialist who has studied El Coloso and doubts over its attribution for nearly 20 years. She also revealed doubts over at least three other Goyas held by the Prado.
..."The person who painted the bulls in El Coloso knew nothing about the anatomy of a bull – which Goya knew everything about," Ms Mena said. "The donkey looks like a furry toy, nothing like Goya's perfectly executed donkeys of the same period. None of the details correspond to the Goya we know."
Two Concurrent Goya Exhibits running at Prado
The exhibit titled "The Spanish Portrait in The Prado. From Goya to Sorolla" has just opened at the Prado.This is the second half of a previous exhibit which traveled to various museums in 2005-2006. I have yet to see a list of paintings included with the exhibit.
And closing on July 13th is "Goya in Time of War" which has as its centerpieces the twin Goya paintings "2nd of May" and "3rd of May" which have been cleaned and restored. (See earlier news item about the restoration work).
The exhibit is so compelling that even those who thought they didn’t care much about Goya are drawn into the tumbled world of 18th-century Spain. Ranging from portraits of his royal patrons to etchings satirizing the follies of mankind and the “Disasters of War,” the show also includes the two monumental paintings that form the best-known artistic record of the abortive May 2 uprising.
Exhibit information: General entry is 6€
Free admission: from Tues to Sat from 6 pm to 8 pm; Sun from 5pm to 8 pm
Advance booking tickets: telephone 902 10 70 77
Date 15 April to 13 July 2008
Curator: Manuela Mena, Chief Curator 18th-century Painting and Goya at the Museum
Jointly organised with the Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales under the direction of the Ministry of Culture
The Goya Tiempos de Guerra Catalog for the exhibit is written by José Luis Díez, Chief Curator of 19th-century Painting at the Prado; Juan J. Luna, Head of the Department of 18th-century Painting and Goya; José Manuel Matilla, Head of the Department of Prints and Drawings; Gudrun Maurer, art historian and associate of the Museo del Prado; and Manuela Mena, Chief Curator of 18th-century Painting and Goya and curator of the exhibition.
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Goya Robbers Head to Jail
Ben Sisario at the New York Times writes about the legal consequences of hijacking Goya's "Cart" Painting:
Two men who stole a valuable Goya painting are going to federal prison, The Associated Press reported. The men, Steven Lee Olson and Roman Szurko, stole “Children With a Cart,” from a transport truck in November 2006 as its drivers spent the night at a motel in Bartonsville, Pa. The work was on its way to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. The painting, from 1778, was insured for $1 million.
3 "Lost" Goya drawings to be sold at Christie's July 8
Art Daily reports on the discovery of three previously assumed 'lost' Goya drawings that are to come up on auction in July:.
Christie’s will offer 3 rediscovered drawings by Francisco José de goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) at the auction of Old Master and 19th Century Drawings on 8 July 2008 in London. Last recorded at a landmark auction of works by the artist in Paris in 1877, the drawings have been missing and presumed lost ever since, and represent the most important grouping of sketches by the artist to be consigned to auction in over 30 years. The three drawings, which will be offered individually, are expected to realise a total in excess of £2 million.
...On 2 April 1877, a landmark auction in Paris offered a series of 105 drawings taken from goya’s celebrated private albums. goya had started assembling personal notebooks or journals in 1796 and gradually filled the pages with imaginative drawings of people in various moods and situations, as both individuals and in groups. The drawings to be offered at Christie’s are taken from two of the artist’s albums, and present three differing styles and subjects.
The auction on July 8 occurs at 11 a.m. at the King Street, London location. There will be four days of viewing prior to the event.
The discovery of the sketches, in a Swiss private collection, has caused great excitement in the art world where they have been hailed as the most important of the acclaimed artist’s work to come to auction for over 30 years.- From the UK Telegraph article
JUNE 5, 2008
South Florida Authentication Efforts at Truthinart.org
A new organization coming from Miami, with an emphasis on Goya artworks, is organizing. Their web site is online but has little information. However, I have been told that they are in the early stages of putting together an exhibit of rare Goya art owned by private collectors.
New York Times Review "Disasters of War"
A local SoHo exhibit of a 4th edition set of 'Disasters' has been reviewed at the New York Times by Karen Rosenberg:
Francisco de Goya’s print series “The Disasters of War,” an extended portrait of the cruelty and aggression that accompanied Spain’s War of Independence in the early 1800s, has been used and abused by artists wishing to plumb the depths of human nature. (In a notorious example, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman purchased a rare edition and drew clowns and puppies over Goya’s images of victims.)
A complete fourth edition, published in 1906 by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, is now on view in SoHo. It will deliver a shock to anyone who thinks that the “Disasters” have been overexposed, or that black-and-white etchings can’t convey terror and intimidation with as much force as more modern mediums.
University of Iowa Exhibit includes "Disasters"
The Helena P. and Ignacio V. Ponseti collection is on view in Iowa City at the University Pentacrest Art Museum. The show includes 6 selections from the 80-print Disasters of War series.
The drawings, sold by Christie's in London, were last recorded at a Paris sale of works by the artist in 1877 and all come from Goya's celebrated private albums.
