Goya | Majas on a Balcony
Majas on a Balcony
Las majas en el balcón
Majas au Balcon
1810 – 1812 Oil on canvas
162 cm x 107 cm
Private collection in Switzerland
There is a duplicate copy of this painting (though with significant differences, and at a slightly larger size) at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
To view our page on Majas on a Balcony painting enlarged go here.
"......the penetrating but also mischievous glance of the two women as they muster the passing parade achieves a riviting liveliness. One feels compelled to pay them an acceptable compliment or to gain their attention and approval in some other way."
Fred Licht, Goya, published by Abbeville Press, Page 116
"La grâce légère des dentelles, la séduction d’un sourire réservé et attirant, l’ombre inquiétante des majos, enveloppés dans leur cape sombre, suggèrent plus qu’ils expriment un monde mystérieux, en une étonnante orchestration des gestes et de sentiments."
from Chefs-D'oevre de l'art, 1969, Published by Hachette-Fabbri
AMAZON
Goya The Terrible Sublime - Graphic Novel - (Spanish Edition) - Amazon
"From this headlong seizure of life we should not expect a calm and refined art, nor a reflective one. Yet Goya was more than a Nietzschean egoist riding roughshod over the world to assert his supermanhood. He was receptive to all shades of feeling, and it was his extreme sensitivity as well as his muscular temerity that actuated his assaults on the outrageous society of Spain." From Thomas Craven's essay on Goya from MEN OF ART (1931).
"...Loneliness has its limits, for Goya was not a prophet but a painter. If he had not been a painter his attitude to life would have found expression only in preaching or suicide." From Andre Malroux's essay in SATURN: AN ESSAY ON GOYA (1957).
"Goya is always a great artist, often a frightening one...light and shade play upon atrocious horrors." From Charles Baudelaire's essay on Goya from CURIOSITES ESTRANGERS (1842).
"[An] extraordinary mingling of hatred and compassion, despair and sardonic humour, realism and fantasy." From the foreword by Aldous Huxley to THE COMPLETE ETCHINGS OF GOYA (1962).
"His analysis in paint, chalk and ink of mass disaster and human frailty pointed to someone obsessed with the chaos of existence..." From the book on Goya by Sarah Symmons (1998).
"I cannot forgive you for admiring Goya...I find nothing in the least pleasing about his paintings or his etchings..." From a letter to (spanish) Duchess Colonna from the French writer Prosper Merimee (1869).
GOYA : Los Caprichos - Dover Edition - Amazon
