Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya was a Spanish artist that was very important in 19th and the 20th century. He was born on March 30th 1746, in a village in Northern Spain. At the age of 14, he was an apprentice with Jose Luzan (a local painter) he later went to Italy to study more about art. 
When he returned to Spain, he started painting frescoes for the local cathedral.
His artworks are known for violence, especially those by the French invasion of Spain. 
In 1792, Goya became seriously ill, resulting in permanent deafness. This targeted his imagination more, making him more observant of his surroundings. His paintings became more bold, showing how Goya really saw the world.
From 1795 to 1797, Goya, was a director of painting at the Royal Academy. He was also appointed first Spanish court painter in 1799.
Goya served as court painter to the French between 1808 and 1814, during the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish war of Independence.
In a series of starkly realistic etching on the war, named The Disasters of War, Goya expressed his feelings towards armed battles. They were not published until 1863. Goya did not see this series get published due to dying in 1828.


 The Naked Maja 


image link: http://www.oceansbridge.com/oil-paintings/product/50786/thenakedmaja

The clothed Maja


image link: http://www.franciscodegoya.net/The-Clothed-Maja-(La-Maja-Vestida).html

Source: Francisco De Goya Biography. 2013. Francisco De Goya Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.franciscodegoya.net/biography.html. [Accessed 04 March 2013].

Romanticism

Unlike what that name suggests, the word Romanticism has nothing to do with romance. It is more of a philosophical movement created by artists in Western cultures about how they thought of themselves and their surroundings. Romanticism started in the late eighteenth Century,and it is also called the "Age of Revolutions". This being that the American Revolution taking place in 1776 and the French Revolutions taken place in 1789, both played a big part of this Era. Very artistically emotional people could be seen in this era, making it the era of varied thoughts. Artists would paint about natural disasters, death, punishment, war and rebellion, how they see them, making the painting raw and full of emotion.
Artists that involve themselves in the romanticism era were called Romantics. These embraced the unknown such as the human body's mysteries, philosophy and even geographical aspect of the world. In fact, nature was a big aspect in this era, featuring a lot in a lot of art works associated with romanticism.








source: Romanticism, Available at: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html (Accessed: 2nd March 2013).
IHAS: Artist/Movement/Ideas. 2013. IHAS: Artist/Movement/Ideas. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/romanticism.html. [Accessed 13 May 2013].