Y se le Quema la Casa [And His House is On Fire] (Los Caprichos Plate 18)

Madrid: Calcografia for the Real Academia, 1878, 1881-1886, or 1905-1907. 4th, 5th, or 8th. Print. Very Good. GOYA, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). "Y se le Quema la Casa [And His House is On Fire] (Los Caprichos, Plate 18)." Madrid: Calcografia for the Real Academia, 1878, 1881-1886, or 1905-1907. From the 4th, 5th, or 8th editions, following Harris. Burnished aquatint etching from a beveled copperplate, numbered and lettered in plate, with black ink on white wove paper without watermarking. Sheet: (11 2/5 x 9 2/5 inches). Plate: (8 9/16 x 6 inches). "The abominable shrews of Goya's Caprices, which until now I had taken for nightmares and monstrous chimeras, are only portraits of frightening accuracy." [Gautier] Goya published "Los Caprichos," one of the most influential series of graphic art images in the history of art, in 1799 at the age of fifty-three. The eighty-print series is a visionary tour-de-force of Enlightenment critique, which acidly eviscerates Spanish received wisdom of the period, from superstition and clericism to academia and medicine. Goya wrote that the Caprichos showed the "innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual." In its moral certitude and vituperation, it is punk; in its visual iconography, it is fantastical. And the victims of Goya's lampoonery are truly far-ranging: the ruling class, the institution of marriage, vanity, avarice, drunkenness, dueling, witchcraft, and the general decline of rationality. To view Los Caprichos is to understand why many assert Goya to be the first modern artist. Lefort describes the present Capricho, Plate 18, as "A man with the face of a drunkard, one sleeve of his jacket past the other, holding on with great difficulty to his socks which escape him, comes out of an attic whose only piece of furniture, a chair, catches fire on contact with a lamp hanging from the back of the chair." Goya himself commented "It will not occur to him to take off his breeches or to stop talking to the candle, until the local fire brigade freshens him up. Wine can do as much as that." Lefort, writing in 1877, states this image is a "Transparent allusion to the critical situation of Charles IV, whose policy of procrastination, or rather that of his all-powerful minister, the Prince of Peace, does not escape the clever artists." The original copperplate is in the Calcografia. Following Harris, it's unclear which edition this print is from, whether the 4th, 5th, or 8th. The fourth was limited to 65 copies, the fifth to 210, the eighth to 180. From the verso, one could tell this print has at one time been creased; however, this is not noticeable from the recto. The top of the sheet is not evenly cut. The left edge of the sheet has a small, expertly repaired closed tear. Very Good condition. Beruete y Moret 38. Blas, "El Libro de Los Caprichos, Francisco de Goya: Dos Siglos de Interpretaciones," 18. Delteil 55. Gautier, "Tra los Montes," p. 53. Harris 53. Hofer, "Los Caprichos," 18. Hoffman, "Katalog Seines Graphischen Werkes," p. 19. Hughes, "Goya," pp. 177-215. Lefort, "Etude Biographique," p. 46. Loga 694. Lopez-Rey, "Caprichos II," Fig. 56. Mayer II.18.