Goya became an official painter for the Spanish court in 1786 and was popular as a portraitist at court, despite the fact that he made no attempt to flatter his subjects—not even the Brigadier of Engineers. Here Colonel Garicini, an official in the War Department, is shown formally in the uniform of the Corps of Engineers, while his pregnant wife, Josefa, is portrayed quite informally with loose hair and house clothes.
Goya was also an accomplished printmaker, and he used this more private art form to offer a dark commentary on the world. In 1799, he published a series of 80 prints called Caprichos, fantastical visions of society’s foibles and follies. “The sleep of reason produces monsters,” he tells us, like the winged creatures pictured here. Might they be related to the shadowy visions that would later haunt his sick bed?
Goya completed another dark series of prints between 1810 and 1820. The Disasters of War presented the horrors of Spain’s struggle with Napoleonic France and the famine that followed, even as Goya remained court painter to the king installed by France. The prints were not published until 35 years after his death.