Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battleshi

This was my introduction to Goya. The great thing about this book (and about all the books in Phaidon's Art & Ideas Series) is that it does an excellent job of putting the artist in historical context. I think this is important, because Goya (like David in France) really is inseparable from his time, and we simply can't understand his images if we don't have any idea about what was going on in Spain and the rest of Europe at the time. "The Disasters of War", for example, means so much more to me now that I understand what happened when Napoleon invaded Spain. I was also glad to see that pictures by some of Goya's contemporaries are included, pictures that would otherwise be hard to find. Some of the author's interpretations, though, gave me pause. For example, when talking about "The Second of May 1808" and "The Third of May 1808", Symmons says that the figure stabbing the horse in the first painting is the same man lying dead in the heap of bodies in the second one -- and then she says that repetition of figures like this is a major theme in Goya's works. It is, but apart from the fact that both of these men are wearing green coats, there's no way of saying they are the same man. Maybe Goya said they were, but if he did, the author hasn't pointed that out. Another quirk is the author's search for Goya's sources. I understand that artists borrow motifs from each other every now and then, but when Symmons tries to tie in a couple of Goya's images with political prints by James Gilray, for example, simply because some of Goya's poses (which really aren't that unusual) vaguely resemble some of Gilray's, I think she's going out on a limb. Maybe Goya did take them from Gilray, but he could have taken them from a thousand other places just as easily, and without more substantial proof of Goya's sources, this section of the book seems too speculative. Overall I found this to be a very useful and engagingly written study, but leave room for forming your own opinions.

Janis Tomlinson, the writer of this book, seems primarily concerned in showing that there is a continuity in Goya's work, that it did not suddenly change from light-hearted to dark after Goya went deaf. For the most part, I feel she achieved this end, I for one am convinced. I wish she wrote more on Goya's technique and his personal life, both of which she does not go into much. The 300 or so colour reproductions of Goya's work are excellent, and there are many good close-ups. Unfortunately, Goya produced around 1,800 works, so it is disappointing that only a fraction of them are in this book.