Goya

Francisco Goya was born in 1746. At 47 he was Spain's best-paid and most celebrated painter, but he had lost his hearing and buried six of his seven children. He served three Spanish kings, the Duke of Wellington, Spanish nobles and intellectuals, and Napoleon's brother. A Spanish prince mockingly named him 'the painting monkey', while critics praised him as 'the philosopher painter'. Friends knew him as Paco and as 'Our Dear Goya', and a local newspaper said one of his portraits brought honour to the entire nation.

Deafness did not stop him from working. He learned to read lips and communicate in sign language, and he painted with his fingers, a palette knife and the pointed end of a brush. He also devised printmaking techniques that artists still use today. Works such as 'Nude Maja', 'The Third of May' and 'Saturn Devouring His Son' are counted among the most forceful and enigmatic paintings in European art.

From youth Goya wanted to keep a record of his life, yet few of his writings survive. His most revealing words are found in his letters, which he exchanged with aristocrats, the royal court and close friends. They show a passionate man who pressed his opinions as forcefully on cathedral authorities as on a trusted companion. Uncompromising and literary in their own right, the letters reflect a new outlook among artists on their craft, their place in society and the sources of their inspiration. They anticipate the personal writings of later artists, including Delacroix's diary, Van Gogh's letters and Dalí's 'Diary of a Genius'.

This collection, many of its letters translated into English for the first time, presents Goya as witty, intense and unexpectedly fragile.