Goya drawings rediscovered after 130 years

This is Francisco Goya: The Third of May, 1808.

From The Times in England:

Three exceptional drawings by Goya, the 18th-century Spanish artist, have been rediscovered after 130 years, to the excitement of art historians and collectors.

Such is their importance that they are expected to sell for more than £2 million at Christie’s in London this summer.

All trace of the drawings, which had been in one of the artist’s sketchbooks, had been lost since they were offered for sale in Paris in 1877. They were among 105 drawings dated back to 1796 and had been collected from sketchbooks whose pages he filled with studies of people in various moods and situations.

They do not relate to any known finished works.

In 1877 the 105 drawings sold for between 6 and 140 francs, far from outstanding prices, despite Goya‘s fame. Two of these three rediscovered examples even went unsold. Today the record for a Goya drawing stands at £1.3 million.

The same story as for so many other artists’ works: people who did not contribute a drop of paint, or a single pencil stroke, making lots of money.

Another drawing shows an anguished figure stitched into a dead horse. The image bears an extensive inscription in Goya’s hand, in which he outlined the story behind it. In Saragossa, in the middle of the 18th century, the peasants revolted against a local official called Lampinos, who had been persecuting students and women in the city. Seeking revenge, the people stitched him inside a dead horse where, according to the inscription, “for the whole night he remained alive”.

See also here.

And here.

Goya: Los Caprichos in Los Angeles: here.

Fantasies, Follies and Disasters: The Prints of Francisco de Goya: here.

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