Goya's Caprichos in Nineteenth-Century France: Politics of the Grotesque

Goya’s impact on nineteenth-century French art was immense and multifaceted. In Spain, he was known for the royal portraits, while in France he became celebrated for the Caprichos, which were obsessively studied by artists such as Eugène Delacroix. French Romantics saw them as a satire of late eighteenth-century Spain, ignoring Goya’s universalism; his work holds a mirror up to humanity, and even his monsters and witches are nothing but the deformed reflection of humans. In a sort of two-way influence, Goya contributed to shaping French Romantic art--hence the beginning of modern art--while the Romantics modelled his critical image. The established interpretation of Goya is therefore partly based on Romantic stereotypes, many of which have been perpetuated to this day.

Paula Fayos Pérez received a PhD in History of Art from Cambridge in 2019 with a dissertation on the influence of Goya on nineteenth-century French art and literature. She worked as a researcher in the Duke of Wellington’s private collection at Apsley House (London) and Stratfield Saye House (Hampshire). Before receiving a ‘Leonardo’ scholarship from the BBVA Foundation, she held a ‘Margarita Salas’ postdoctoral fellowship to teach and conduct research at the Universities of Strasbourg and Madrid (Complutense). In 2023 she organised the international seminar Goya: grotesco / coleccionismo. She has written articles for The Burlington Magazine (2019, 2020), the Boletín del Museo del Prado (2022), and Print Quarterly (2023). Her book can be purchased via the CEEH website: https://www.ceeh.es/en/publicacion/goyas-caprichos-in-nineteenth-century-france-politics-of-the-grotesque/