Around 1770 he was in Italy and in Rome in 1771. That same year he returned to Saragossa where he worked in the Cathedral. Four years later he was in Madrid and in 1776 began producing tapestry cartoons for the Royal manufactory. Thus began his successful career and under a decade later he became Deputy Director of the Academy. By 1799 he was the Principal Painter to the King though his life was not without suffering. In the early 1790s, he became blighted by ill-health and became deaf. This suffering had an enormous impact on his work. Periods of introspection juxtaposed with periods of extreme pain produced a body of dark fantasical work which was at odds with the official portaits he continued to do. Moreover, Goya could paint the frescoes of the cupola of S. Antonio de la Florida in Madrid in 1798 while in the same period savagely attack the abuses of the Church in a series of etchings called Los Caprichos.

Goya wasn't alone in this dichotomy. There were many Spanish liberal intellectuals and artists who reacted in kind. The dilemma was most acute in 1793 when Charles IV declared war on the new French Republic. The liberals were sympathetic with the French and when Napoleon's army invaded Spain in 1808 and drove out Charles IV's successor Ferdinand VII, many Spaniards welcomed his liberalism yet hated foreign domination. The Duke of Wellington's long Peninsular Campaign drove out the French but during which Spanish insurgents waged a guerilla war and the French in turn behaved with savagery similar to the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. Goya recorded their atrocities in, arguably, the greatest series of etchings ever made, The Disasters of War (1810-13) and in two paintings now in the Prado, Madrid, 2 May and 3 May 1808 (c. 1814).

When Ferdinand VII was restored in 1814 Goya was pardoned for working for Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother who had succeeded Ferdinand VII. Among his work in this period was a portrait of Wellington. He worked for the Spanish Court until 1824 when there was a fresh wave of reaction which resulted in him leaving for Paris and then into voluntary exile in Bordeaux.

Trivia:

• The series of etchings The Disasters of War were only published in full in 1863, some 35 years after Goya's death
• Goya embrached the new art of lithography in 1819 by producing the bull-fighting series The Bulls of Bordeaux
• He produced single prints and some etchings and aquatints
• His predecessor as Court Painter was Velazquez
• He made the Black Paintings at his house near Manzanares, which was known as the House of the Deaf Man
• He collected engravings
• The best places to see his prints are in the British Museum, London, Madrid (Prado, where else??) and New York (Hispanic Soc.)

Collections:

• Madrid (Prado, Acad., S. Antonio de la Florida)

• Agen
• Amsterdam (Rijksmus.)
• Baltimore
• Barnard Castle (Bowes Mus.)
• Bayonne
• Berlin
• Besancon
• Boston (Mus.)
• Budapest
• Castres
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Cleveland Ohio
• Detroit
• Dublin
• Edinburgh
• Hartford Conn.
• Houston Texas
• Kansas City
• Lille
• London (NG, Courtauld Inst., Wellington Mus.)
• Minneapolis
• Montreal
• Munich
• New York (Met. Mus., Frick Coll., Brooklyn Mus.)
• Northampton Mass. (Smith Coll.)
• Ottawa
• Paris (Louvre)
• St Louis
• San Diego Cal.
• Sao Paulo
• Seville
• Toledo
• Toledo Ohio
• Valencia
• Washington (NG, Phillips)
• Worcester Mass.