From the miserable state into which

From the miserable state into which Spain had fallen by the end of the seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place. Like a meteor,oil paintings for sale, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more satirical from the necessity for concealment. In his more outspoken works,art oil paintings online such as the Disasters of War, and the series of prints calledLos Caprichos and Tauromachia, he is too brutal not to affect the ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. Velasquez himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers of repulsion. Goya, being exactly the opposite of Velasquez in temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject; and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the standard of chastity" required. But between the extremes of brutality and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting that nothing can diminish the reputation of Goya, however much it is likely to be enhanced. To the modern Spanish painter he is probably as fixed a beacon as Velasquez. oil painting on canvas

PLATE XX.—MURILLO
A BOY DRINKINGNational Gallery, London