The Disasters of War
The Disasters of War is a series of 82 prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising, the subsequent cruel war that ended in Spanish victory in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. During the conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire and Spain, Goya retained his position as first court painter to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers. Although deeply affected by the war, he kept private his thoughts on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath.
He was in poor health and almost deaf when, at 62, he began work on the prints. They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. It is likely that only then was it considered politically safe to distribute a sequence of artworks criticising both the French and restored Bourbons. In total over a thousand sets have been printed, though later ones are of lower quality, and most print room collections have at least some of the set.
The name by which the series is known today is not Goya's own. His handwritten title on an album of proofs given to a friend reads: Fatal Consequences of Spain's Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices. Aside from the titles or captions given to each print, these are Goya's only known words on the series. With these works, he breaks from a number of painterly traditions. He rejects the bombastic heroics of most previous Spanish war art to show the effect of conflict on individuals. In addition he abandons colour in favour of a more direct truth he found in shadow and shade.
The series was produced using a variety of intaglio printmaking techniques, mainly etching for the line work and aquatint for the tonal areas, but also engraving and drypoint. As with many other Goya prints, they are sometimes referred to as aquatints, but more often as etchings. The series is usually considered in three groups which broadly mirror the order of their creation. The first 47 focus on incidents from the war and show the consequences of the conflict on individual soldiers and civilians. The middle series record the effects of the famine that hit Madrid in 1811–12, before the city was liberated from the French. The final 17 reflect the bitter disappointment of liberals when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and opposed both state and religious reform. Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage". The serial nature in which the plates unfold has led some to see the images as similar in nature to photography.
Historical background
Bonaparte declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on 18 February 1799, and was crowned Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, it was politically and strategically important to him. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV, was internationally regarded as ineffectual, and his position at the time was threatened by his pro-British heir, Crown Prince Ferdinand. Napoleon took advantage of Charles's weak standing by suggesting the two nations conquer Portugal—the spoils to be divided equally between France, Spain and the Spanish Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy, who would take the title "Prince of the Algarve". Seduced by the French offer, Godoy accepted, failing to detect the true motivations of either Napoleon or Ferdinand, who both intended to use the invasion as a ploy, to seize power in Spain.File:El Tres de Mayo, by Francisco de Goya, from Prado thin black margin.jpg|left|thumb|In The Third of May 1808, along with its companion work The Second of May 1808, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808. Both were produced in 1814, while the print series was in progress.|alt=A scene of an execution at night with a city in the background. On the left is a group of civilians in varying states of despair. The focal point is a man whose white shirt is lit by a lantern. He throws his arms in the air and glares at the firing squad. Corpses lie on the bloodstained ground. On the right a row of soldiers, seen from the back, take aim.
Under the guise of reinforcing the Spanish armies, 25,000 French troops entered Spain unopposed in November 1807. Even when their intentions became clear the following February, the occupying forces faced little resistance besides isolated actions in disconnected areas. In 1808, a popular uprising—incited by Ferdinand's supporters—saw Godoy captured and left Charles with no choice but to abdicate; he did so on 19 March 1808, allowing his son to ascend the throne as Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand had been seeking French patronage, but Napoleon and his principal commander, Marshal Joachim Murat, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers who were more progressive and competent than the Bourbons. They decided that Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, should be king. Under a pretext of mediation, Napoleon summoned Charles and Ferdinand to Bayonne, France, where they were coerced into relinquishing their rights to the throne in favour of Joseph.
File:Francisco Goya - Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.jpg|thumb|Francisco Goya, Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, 1812–14. During the Peninsular War, the British, led by Wellington, led a proxy war against Napoleon's marshals and the Imperial French Army.|alt=Half-length portrait of Wellington turned slightly to the left, wearing 18th-century British military officers uniform and many decorations, including several ribbons across his chest and a large star.
Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was left in a difficult position after the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the French Revolution, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from feudalism to become a secular, democratic political system. There were two conflicts being fought in Spain: the resistance against the French threat, and a domestic struggle between the ideals of liberal modernisation and the pre-political incumbent ruling class. The latter divide became more pronounced—and the differences far more entrenched—following the eventual withdrawal of the French.
Several of Goya's friends, including the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés and Leandro Fernández de Moratín, were overt afrancesados: the supporters of Joseph Bonaparte. He maintained his position as court painter, for which an oath of loyalty to Joseph was necessary. However, Goya had an instinctive dislike of authority, and witnessed first-hand the subjugation of his countrymen by French troops. During these years he painted little aside from portraits of figures from all parties, including an allegorical painting of Joseph Bonaparte in 1810, Wellington from 1812 to 1814, and French and Spanish generals. Meanwhile, Goya was working on drawings that would form the basis for The Disasters of War. He visited many battle sites around Madrid to witness the Spanish resistance. The final plates are testament to what he described as "el desmembramiento d'España"—the dismemberment of Spain.
Plates
Art historians broadly agree that The Disasters of War is divided into three thematic groupings—war, famine, and political and cultural allegories. This sequence broadly reflects the order in which the plates were created. Few of the plates or drawings are dated; instead, their chronology has been established by identifying specific incidents to which the plates refer, and the different batches of plates used, which allow sequential groups to be divined. For the most part, Goya's numbering agrees with these other methods. However, there are several exceptions. For example, plate 1 was among the last to be completed, after the end of the war.In the early plates of the war grouping, Goya's sympathies appear to lie with the Spanish defenders. These images typically show patriots facing hulking, anonymous invaders who treat them with fierce cruelty. As the series progresses, the distinction between the Spanish and the imperialists becomes ambiguous. In other plates, it is difficult to tell to which camp the distorted and disfigured corpses belong. Some of the titles deliberately question the intentions of both sides; for example, Con razon ó sin ella can mean with or without reason, rightly or wrongly, or for something or for nothing. Critic Philip Shaw notes that the ambiguity is still present in the final group of plates, saying there is no distinction between the "heroic defenders of the Fatherland and the barbaric supporters of the old regime".
War
Plates 1 to 47 consist mainly of realistic depictions of the horrors of the war fought against the French. Most portray the aftermath of battle; they include mutilated torsos and limbs mounted on trees, like "fragments of marble sculpture". Both French and Spanish troops tortured and mutilated captives; evidence of such acts is minutely detailed across a number of Goya's plates. Civilian death is also captured in detail. Spanish women were commonly victims of assault and rape. Civilians often followed armies to battle scenes. If their side won, women and children would search the battlefield for their husbands, fathers and sons. If they lost, they fled in fear of being raped or murdered. In plate 9, No quieren, an elderly woman is shown wielding a knife in defence of a young woman who is being assaulted by a soldier.The group begins with Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer, in which a man kneels in the darkness with outstretched arms. The following plates describe combat with the French, who—according to art critic Vivien Raynor—are depicted "rather like Cossacks, bayoneting civilians", while Spanish civilians are shown "poleaxing the French." Plates 31 to 39 focus on atrocities and were produced on the same batch of plates as the famine group. Others are based on drawings Goya had completed in his Sketchbook-journal, in studies where he examined the theme of the grotesque body in relation to the iconography of the tortured or martyred one. In his India ink wash drawing We cannot look at this, he examined the idea of a humiliated inverted body with pathos and tragedy, as he did to comical effect in The Straw Mannequin.
Unlike most earlier Spanish art, Goya's rejects the ideals of heroic dignity. He refuses to focus on individual participants; though he drew from many classic art sources, his works pointedly portray the protagonists as anonymous casualties, rather than known patriots. The exception is plate 7, Que valor!, which depicts Agustina de Aragón, heroine of the first siege of Zaragoza, who, after seeing the killing of the cannoneers defending the city to whom she had been bringing food, loaded and fired a cannon herself into the French forces. Although it is agreed that Goya could not have witnessed this incident, Robert Hughes believes it may have been his visit to Zaragoza in the lull between the first and second phases of the siege that inspired him to produce the series.