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Arts & Communication Spanish art and its enemies

the visual artists of a powerful country, with a violent and that it requires certain courage to say the truth
controversial history often seen as the once tyrannical about him. The successor of Velasquez has been
ruler of a huge empire. However, similar criticisms have lifted up to the rank of a great master and since,
survived into the modern world and similar critical attacks on the Continent, the great masters are not to be
are not only directed against the religious sculptors of the criticized but only worshipped, their position is
Sevillian School but also against Spanish secular art. almost unassailable. what is fame? It is nothing but
In the context of British art historians writing about a noise made by talkers and writers… 21(pp.67-68)
Spanish art in journals and response to exhibitions, it is Speaking of the Black Paintings, which he derisively calls
ironic that the most hostile and quasi-abusive critique ever “frescoes” (although he goes on to explain how these were
written about a Spanish artist – indeed, by association, oils transferred onto the canvas from Goya’s own house),
about Spain itself – appeared in a British journal edited he describes how the artist’s creative imagination failed to
by a distinguished English artist and critic, Philip Gilbert produce anything pure, beautiful, or elevated. In fact, the
Hamerton (1834 – 1894). His three articles on Goya images painted by Goya are foul in color, disgusting, and
appeared in the well-respected art journal The Portfolio in “grovel” in a horrible, chaotic region of their own.
1879. 21 Some of this rhetoric brings to mind the language of

Hamerton lived in Paris, and his articles were partly critical hostility directed against Spanish Church sculpture
sparked by the exhibition of Goya’s so-called “Black and painting of the 17 century when Spanish artists
th
Paintings” at the Universal Exposition held in Paris in searched for the means of conveying to the beholder the
1878. His diatribe on Goya’s art was prompted by this suffering of martyrdom as a direct experience. The raw
first display of the “Black Paintings” after they had been realism of certain kinds of Spanish art had again met the
transferred from the walls of Goya’s last dwelling in Spain, critical legacy of the British critics. Apart from one or two
his villa outside Madrid, known as The House of the Deaf classical and Christian themes Goya used in the Black
Man (Quinta del Sordo). Paintings, there was arguably little of traditional art in
The first of Hamerton’s articles, Goya I, sets the scene: their achievement. However, for Hamerton, the grotesque
If the reader visited the Universal Exhibition in qualities of such imagery were something he found deeply
Paris in 1878, he will probably not have failed to disturbing.
pass at least some hours in the “Retrospective,” The fine art exhibits were poorly hung in the 1878
which occupied the galleries of the Trocadero, and fair, according to contemporary accounts and Hamerton’s
it is just possible that he may remember a series of articles dealt only briefly with the paintings. His main
paintings by Goya, the property of Baron Erlanger, interest, however, was Goya’s famous prints. The Portfolio
which were kindly lent by him to give the Parisian was a periodical devoted to analyzing works on paper, with
public, and foreigners from beyond the sea….an articles published on prints by Rembrandt, Durer, and
opportunity of deriving moral and esthetic benefit Whistler, among others.
from the works of the successor of Velasquez Pausing his diatribe about Goya’s paintings, Hamerton
(sic). 21(pp.67-69) then goes on to give an outline of the artist’s life, from a
Continuing to portray innocent visitors stopping to delinquent, moody child to a teenager always in trouble
look at paintings by Goya, Hamerton claims that the only with the authorities, giving examples of how Goya seduced
reason these untutored spectators paused and tried to young women and made his way at the Spanish court
admire these works was because they had been influenced through flattery, charm, and his influence on women. “He
by critics to regard Goya as a great “celebrity” and that was welcomed for his vices,” states Hamerton, with no
because of this, they felt obliged to scrutinize the paintings evidence. “He lived at court in an atmosphere of vice and
and even to admire them. He continues to express some corruption which suited him exactly. He was the pet of the
doubts as to whether such images should be shown to great ladies who were as destitute of morality as himself….”
untutored visitors, much like 130 years later, the organizers According to this text, it was through the Duchess of Alba
of The Sacred Made Real in London wondered if children that Goya caught an illness which caused deafness and
below the age of 18 should be allowed to see the show. changed his nature, which “soured” him. 21(p.72)
Hamerton continues, swiftly moving from the Black In the second of these articles, Hamerton looks at
Paintings to the body of literature concerning Spanish art: Goya’s later life. It is here that Goya’s immorality causes the
Goya has indeed been so much written up by writer to see the whole of Spain, and not just the Spanish
Continental critics during the past 10 or 20 years, court, as evil and corrupt. Goya reminds Hamerton of

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 5 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604