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Lithography was invented by the playwright Aloys Senefelder (1771–1834) between
1796 and 1799. Goya first experimented with the new process in Madrid in 1819
but achieved his greatest success with the medium during his years in Bordeaux.
There he benefited from the expertise of the printer Cyprien Gaulon, adapting the
technique to his own expressive interests. An idea of his unorthodox working
method is captured in the following passage by Antonio de Brugada, a painter
from Madrid and companion to Goya in Bordeaux:
The artist worked at his lithographs on his easel, the stone
placed like a canvas. He handled the crayons like paintbrushes
and never sharpened them. He remained standing, walking
backward and forward from moment to moment to judge the
effect. He usually covered the whole stone with a uniform
gray tint, and then removed the areas that were to be light
with a scraper; here a head, a figure, there a horse, a bull. The
crayon was then brought back into play to reinforce the shadows
and accents, or to indicate figures and give them a sense
of movement. . . .
Among the lithographs Goya produced during this period are the Bulls of
Bordeaux — a term devised by Paul Lefort in 1868 for a series of four prints
depicting scenes of the corrida (bullfight). Bullfighting was a long-standing interest
for Goya, who had treated the subject in a series of etchings called La
Tauromaquia (1815–16). The artist seems to have conceived the Bulls of Bordeaux
as a commercial venture but was unsuccessful in marketing them. To eyes accustomed
to the tidy appearance of the lithographs of the day, the abbreviated forms
and rough highlights that characterize these prints may have looked crude and
unfinished. Later generations, however, admired the prints’ audacious qualities. In
1857 Charles Baudelaire described them as “admirable plates, vast pictures in
miniature.” Although these works were created relatively early in the history of
the medium, they are considered masterpieces of lithography.
For more information about the works of art included in the exhibition and to see the related images, click on the following links:
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