The History of Modern Painting  

"For Winckelmann's mistake, as Herder had already pointed out with great justice, consisted not only in this, that he set up for imitation a departed ideal for the consciousness of his contemporaries, but notably in that he obtruded principles upon modern painting which might be valid in ancient sculpture. Since the antique ideal was solely a plastic one, and neither the Greek Prussian nor, later, Meister Ephraim was clear as to the difference between sculpture and painting, they practically recommended the painter to work after plastic models."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther

Francisco Goya preached Nihilism in the home of belief. He denied everything, believed nothing, doubted of everything, even of that peace and liberty which he hoped to be at hand. That old Spanish art of religion and dogma was changed under his hands to an art of negation and sarcasm. His attitude is not that of an insolent and impetuous youth, who puts out his tongue at the Academy and strikes with audacious hand at the academicians' high powdered perruques; it is the attitude of the modern spirit, which begins by doubting all things which have been honoured hitherto. His Church pictures are devoid of religious feeling, and his etchings replete with sneers at everything which was previously esteemed as authority. He scoffs at the clerical classes and the religious orders, laughs at the priestly raiment which covered the passions of humanity. Spanish art, which began in a blind piety, becomes in Goya revolutionary, free, modern.

Goya is, in his whole nature, a modern man, a restless, feverish soul; nervous as a décadent; temperament to his finger-tips. His style in portraiture, his art of composition, his whole method,--all speak to our artists to-day in a language easily understood, and on many of them the influence of Goya is unmistakable. He is one of the most fascinating figures of the beginning of the century. As audacious as he was clever, as versatile as he was fantastic, a keen observer as well as a strong creative spirit, he fascinates and astonishes in his pictures, just as in his wonderful etchings, by a remarkable mixture of the bizarre and the original. His pictures, whether they be violent or eccentric, tender or hard, gloomy or joyous, nearly always move and palpitate with life itself, and they will always keep their attraction. There is no one of Goya's pictures, not even the flimsiest sketch, at which one can look coldly."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther

"The historian who wishes to relate the history of painting in the nineteenth century is confronted with quite other demands than await him who undertakes the art of an earlier period. The greatest difficulty with which the latter has to cope is the deficiency of sources. He manifestly gropes in the dark with regard to the works of the masters as well as to the circumstances of their lives. After he has searched archives and libraries in order to collect his biographical material, the real critical problem awaits him. Even amongst the admittedly authentic works, those which are undated confront those whose chronology is certain. To these must be added those nameless ones, as to whose history there is a doubt; to these again, those whose origin is to be ascertained. It needs a quick eye to separate the schools and groups, and finally to recognise the notes which are peculiar to the master."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther

"Like French art, Spanish art, after Goya's death, had borne the yoke of Classicism, Romanticism, and academical influence by turns. In the grave of Goya there was buried for ever, as it seemed, the world of torreros, majas, manolas, monks, smugglers, knaves, and witches, and all the local colour of the Spanish Peninsula. As late as the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, Spain was merely represented by a few carefully composed, and just as carefully painted, but tame and tedious, historical pictures of the David or the Delaroche stamp — works such as had been painted for whole decades by José Madrazo, J. Ribera y Fernandez, Federigo Madrazo, Carlo Luis Ribera, Eduardo Rosales, and many others whose names there is no reason for rescuing from oblivion. They laboured, meditating an art which was not their own, and could not waken any echo in themselves. Their painting was body without soul, empty histrionic skill. As complete darkness had rested for a century over Spanish art, from the death of Claudio Coellos in 1693 to the appearance of Goya, rising like a meteor, so the first half of the nineteenth century produced no single original artist until Fortuny came forward in the sixties."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther

"And only a slight alteration in the truths of nature has sufficed him for the creation of such chimerical beings. As a landscape-painter he stands with all his fibers rooted in the earth, although he seems quite alienated from this world of ours, and his fabulous creatures make the same convincing impression because they have been created with all the inner logical congruity of nature, and delineated under close relationship to actual fact with the same numerous details as the real animals of the earth. For his tritons, sirens, and mermaids, with their prominent eyes and their awkward bodies covered with bristly hair, he may have made studies from seals and walruses. His obese and short-winded tritons, with shining red faces and flaxen hair dripping with moisture, are good-humored old men with a quantity of warm blood in their veins, who love and laugh and drink new wine. His fauns may be met with amongst the shepherds of the Campagna, swarthy, strapping fellows dressed in goatskin after the fashion of Pan. It is chiefly the color lavished upon them which turns them into children of an unearthly world, where other suns are shining, and other stars."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther