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Arts & Communication Spanish art and its enemies

“an infernal force.” 21(p.82) This perception was particularly knew well and which many critics considered progressive,
true of Goya’s prints, which showed how he delighted in valuable, and original, were transformed into the products
disgusting subjects. Goya was an unfaithful husband and a of a transgressive imagination.
violent revolutionary. While none of these claims are true, Hamerton distinguishes himself by his public diatribe
some of this hyperbole is taken from popular biographies, against both Goya’s art and the man himself:
and some seem to have been invented by Hamerton to His personal character was in many ways as
support his claim that Goya’s art was as corrupt as the artist repulsive as his art. The fame of Goya has already
and his nation. According to Hamerton, Goya lived in a poisoned art criticism in Spain and France, and
“thoroughly immoral state of society.”
it is beginning to spread to England…It is time
Hamerton devoted the 1879 articles to Goya’s life and therefore to show plainly what Goya was. 21(p.69)
work in general, especially with the major print sets Goya The condition of Goya’s mind – his continued state
produced in his lifetime, which made him famous far of anger and hatred – dominates the rest of Hamerton’s
beyond the confines of Spain. Hamerton wrote: essays. It may be only coincidence that the artist, as a
His real delight was horror, as we see quite plainly transgressor who chose to portray the macabre and
from his numerous etchings, the Caprices, the horrific while in a continuous state of anger, was
Disasters of War, and others, all executed by him in exemplified by Hamerton, who especially referenced
the free energy of private and personal inspiration. Goya’s internationally famous prints, the Caprichos.
…Moral horror seems to have been as attractive to Hamerton was not alone. In fact, his loathing of Goya’s
him as physical… 21(p.69)
prints was shared by others in Goya’s own day. The
Written as a direct response to Goya’s work, the articles professor of engraving and printmaking at the Royal
by Hamerton in The Portfolio offered a major esthetic Academy in Madrid, upon receiving a copy of the artist’s
change in how popular art journalism might criticize Los Caprichos published in 1799, recorded his opinion
the art of Spain. According to Hamerton, Goya was a in his diary: “Saw a book of witches and satires by Goya;
monster of immorality, but “how could he be otherwise, didn’t like it, it’s very obscene.” 22(p.162)
since he lived in an intensely corrupt society?” 21(pp.100-101) . The graphic art of Goya, censured by critics in his own
This vituperative attack on Spain and its art by a British country and abroad, was a secular art lacking any gloss
writer may well have prompted the trend of associating
such art with the growth of horror occasionally used in of Catholic extremism. Yet, this censure mirrored the
critical hostility directed at Spanish religious sculpture
20 -century novels and films. Similarly, the assumption and painting. Victor Hugo described Goya as an artist who
th
grew that artistic subject matter reflected the character of drew “hobgoblins” in his art, and John Ruskin actually
the fine artist and held up a mirror to the artist’s society.
burned some of Goya’s prints.
The hostile outpourings of this English critic, whose
st
writings are now little known in the 21 century, 5. Twentieth-century redemption
therefore targeted not just the artist and his work but The twentieth century developed more tolerant attitudes
also his character, the culture, and the society in which toward the fine arts, absorbing and popularizing styles,
he lived and worked, extending to the vilification of such as Surrealism and Abstraction. Despite often robust
the entire Spanish nation. Although Hamerton himself controversies, it managed to support the idea of artistic
may have faded into obscurity, The Portfolio was an independence. Biographies of great artists became even
influential periodical and an arbiter of taste. It is ironic more popular than they had been in the 19 century,
th
that, as later researchers have discovered, the reputation and Hamerton’s method of portraying an artist’s life as
of Goya – whose techniques were often at odds with the inextricably linked to moral character and the qualities of
conventional painting and engraving methods of his a specific nation gave new impetus to art historiography.
time, as well as prevailing tastes – established a spurious The artist and his country, along with his struggles and
posthumous reputation as a revolutionary, adulterer, and triumphs, reflected something intrinsic to that country.
violent personality. In 1934, Ernest Hemingway, writing in support of the
Hamerton invented a form of hostile rhetoric through New York exhibition of prints and drawings by Luis
which repellent subject matter is united to the artist’s moral Quintanilla (1893 – 1978), claimed that “Good Spanish
character. The fantastic physiognomies Goya designed in painters are always in trouble.” He went on to describe the
his prints – Los Caprichos, the Disparates, and the stark difficulties faced by Velazquez, Goya, Picasso, and Juan
realism of the Disasters of War – all of which Hamerton Gris. 23(pp.178-179)

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 6 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604