Art Appreciation & Criticism by Wong Wei Thong
Francisco Goya, Two Old Men Eating Soup. 1819-1823. Oil mural transferred to canvas, 19.4” x 32.8”
Part I: Description
The painting selected for this Art Appreciation exercise is entitled ‘Two Old Men Eating Soup’, painted by Francisco Goya in 1819 - 1823.
On the foreground, the two figures are shown in the left and right of the artwork which look like a crone and a corpse. On the left side, the yellowish head of the crone is drawn into bald with thick eyebrows, big nose, and grimace. The crone has different colour of eyes which are yellowish right eye and reddish left eye. She is covered by black cloth and holding a yellowish grey spoon by using right hand. She is looking at her right side with three quarter face view and pointing to the right by using her left hand.
On the right side of the foreground, the corpse is looking up 45° to the right side with the static position which its head almost leaning against its right shoulder. It seems death and deformed figure since it has a yellowish skull-like visage with a pair of black hollows and big nostril. It is covered with a white cloth and pointing to its right side same as the crone by using its left hand.
On the bottom of the artwork, the black bowl with yellow edge was drawn on the black table. It seems like there is a white cloth or unknown white material placed on the table which is at the left side of the corpse. The background of the artwork is black colour.
Part II: Analysis
‘Two Old Men Eating Soup’ had applied many elements and principles of art by Francisco Goya. It is oil mural transferred to canvas with the technique of loose brushstroke (sfumato) which created a pasty effect.
Vertical line and implied line were applied to the artwork which vertical line suggests the stability of the crone while implied line directs the viewer’s eyes to the left of the artwork by using the fingers pointing and face view of the two figures. The colour used in the artwork is high contrast with the use of analogous yellow, monochromatic yellow, black, ochres, earth tones and grey colours to create a strong chiaroscuro value and dramatic effect. Analogous yellow is used to show the bright and dark of the face and the hands of crone.
Monochromatic yellow is used to suggest the shadow of the face of the corpse and the clothes of crone and corpse.
The artwork is expressive of strong chiaroscuro which suggests the shadow of crone and corpse by applying monochromatic yellow to model three-dimensional forms and create distinct areas of lightness and darkness in the artwork.
The composition of the artwork is asymmetrical balance which results in the unequal visual weight on each side of the composition. The shallow space is created in this artwork which the subjects of the foreground are in focus and the background is unclear.
Based on the dominance of the artwork, the crone reaches the dominant level which gets the most emphasis in the artwork. The corpse, yellowish grey spoon and unknown white material are at subdominant level which get the secondary emphasis and lesser visual weight than the crone while the least visual weight in the artwork are the black bowl and black table on the left bottom of the artwork.
The emphasis of the artwork is used by applying high contrast colours, the size of the two figures and strong chiaroscuro value. The size of the crone and corpse occupy about 70% of the artwork to increase the visual weight and catch the eyes of viewers.
Part III: Interpretation
‘Two Old Men Eating Soup’ is one of the 14 Black Paintings which decorated on the interior walls of two-storey house named as Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man) by Francisco Goya. This painting is painted above the main door of the house and became one of the private collection of Francisco Goya as Black Paintings were neither commissioned nor sold and no visitors saw them before. In the 1874, a series of 14 Black Paintings murals were transferred to canvas under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells at the request of Baron Émile d’Erlanger, a French banker of German origins, who wanted to sell them at the Paris World’s Fair in 1878 (Black Painting, 2014, In Wikipedia, para.5). However, the paintings were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and then donated to the Museo del Prado (Lubow, A. (2003) para. 6).
A series of 14 strong chiaroscuro, haunting and disturbing theme paintings were painted between 1819 and 1823 by Francisco Goya and painted on the interior walls of the Quinta del Sordo which he purchased in February 1819, at age 72. Before he started his Black Paintings, he fell a serious illness which resulted in almost entirely deaf after his recovery. He wrote to a friend, Bernardo de Yriarte, in 1794, "Vexed by . . . my illnesses, and to compensate in part for the great wastes of time they have cost me, I have dedicated myself to painting a group of cabinet pictures in which I have succeeded in making observations that ordinarily find no place in commissioned works." (Goya’s unflinching eye, 2003, para.28). Toward the end of his life, he had changed his character, become self-closing and embittered. He was deaf, he had fallen out of grace with the royal court, and his country was at war. Therefore, he expressed personal torments of illness and anxieties of growing old by painted a series of dark themes murals onto the interior walls of Quinta del Sordo directly. Black Paintings reflect the fear of insanity upon his illness, his bleak view of humanity, and his hope for a more liberal government after the Napoleonic occupation of Spain ended (Fox, M. (2014) para.2).
The unearthly painting, ‘Two Old Men Eating Soup’, comes with the haunting yet compelling theme, rendered the quickest gestures of the loose brushstroke and palette knife, used the high contrast yet dirty colours and demonstrated the light from left side to create strong chiaroscuro value and dramatic effect.
From the painting, the crone and corpse appear off-center, looking and pointing to the same direction, they are seemed to be inviting Goya for a meal with an evil smile and perhaps they are pointing to Goya and saying “You are the next”. This painting was painted above the main door of the ground floor room, it seems like unwelcome guests joining for a meal as the painting expresses the pessimism and sorrow, as we know, the skull-like visage of corpse represents death.
There is no beauty in this painting, Goya painted the crone and corpse to show the ugly and bizarre, with the haunting theme and nightmarish imagery, to display the aspects of human life which make the viewers feel uncomfortable and sombre. It can be said that in the series of Black Paintings, Goya went further than ever in realizing his revolutionary ideas and innovative approach to pictorial art (Black Painting, 2014, In Wikipedia, para.30).
REFERENCES / Bibliography
Black Paintings. (2017, July 23). Retrieved July 27, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Paintings
Lubow, A. (2003, July 26). The Secret of the Black Paintings. Retrieved July 27, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/magazine/the-secret-of-the-black-paintings.html
Goya's unflinching eye. (2003, October 03). Retrieved July 27, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/oct/04/art.biography
Fox, M. (2014, September 14). Why did Francisco Goya produce the Black Paintings [Answer 1]. Answer posted to http://www. quora.com/Why-did-Francisco-Goya-produce-the-Black-Paintings
Picture Credit
Sircar, S. (n.d.). Two Old Men Eating Soup [Digital image]. Retrieved from http://thirddime.com/media/7/francisco-goya/francisco-goya_two-old-men-eating-soup_thirddime.jpg
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