Lot 122 email save

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES

Asi sucedio (This is How it Happened), plate 47 from Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War), circa 1810

Etching and burnished aquatint in sepia, on wove paper, with margins, I. 6 1/8 x 8 1/8 in. (15.6 x 20.6 cm); S. 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm), from the first edition, published in the Workshop of Laurenciano Potenciano for the Real Academia, 1863, surface soiling (particularly in the margins), pale time staining, adhesive remains at the upper right corner, occasional soiling on the reverse, otherwise in very good condition, unframed.

PROVENANCE Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002) inkstamp
LITERATURE Loys Delteil 166; Tomás Harris 167

The Disasters vary considerably in style and technique. Goya was clearly working under hardship conditions, using scratched and pitted plates that he tried to correct by scraping and burnishing, and acid washes called lavis rather than aquatint in some cases. Both aquatint and lavis can help to camouflage defects in the plate, but the latter is much cruder. The acid is allowed to etch the plate directly by immersion or brushing onto the surace. Lavis has no grain, but a brushstroke is often evident, and the bubbles in the acid produce small dots surrounded by dark rings. In addition, Tomás Harris has noted areas in some of the prints (33 and 37, for example) that could not have been produced by lavis or aquatint. He suggests that Goya utilized grains of salt or sand in the ground, so that the acid would etch wherever the grains were. (Linda C. Hults The Print in the Western World, The University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1996, p. 413)

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