Galerie Paul Prouté

As well as being an extraordinary painter, who produced several of the most famous paintings in the history of art, Francisco Goya y Lucientes was also an engraver. Carefully prepared with numerous preparatory drawings (which are characterised by a very free use of wash), executed in etching and aquatint (a new technique in which Goya excelled), his prints—a far cry from the genre scenes and, above all, the portraits that brought him fame—present a more personal image of the artist, one closer to the visionary (even fantastical) and socially committed (to the point of exile) Enlightenment figure that Goya was. Numbering two hundred and ninety-one (including twenty-three lithographs which Goya experimented with towards the end of his life), they mostly form the four extremely famous series: Caprices, The Disasters of War, Bullfighting and Proverbs. Little marketed and little known during the painter-engraver’s lifetime (in a country where the tradition of original printmaking was virtually non-existent), they contributed in the 19th century – even more so than his paintings – to establishing Goya as the epitome of the genius artist.