The most celebrated pictures of Goya’s last years are the series of 14 so-called “Black Australian Landscape Paintings” done for a suite of rooms in the coutry house just outside Madrid that he purchased in 1819. Aged 74 when he began this group, he had already been dangerously ill in 1819, as the Self-Portrait with Doctor Arreita, a gift of gratitude to his doctor, records. Old age and infirmity have been suggested as a linking theme for this series. But the overall meaning has never been satisfactorily explained. All the pictures were painted directly onto the wall and they are all, to a greater or lesser degree, damaged. In 1878 they were transferred to canvas supports. Goya painted these works very rapidly, using broad strokes applied with large brush, palette knife and possibly sponges. He may have regarded them primarily as a technical experiment. Attempts to tease out connections with the earlier Caprichos or Disastros have proved difficult. They are perhaps best considered as hermetic self-contained fantasies, despite several elements being based upon, or strongly evocative of, earlier images. Suggestions that they contain an essentially nihilistic message are not convincing. If any connection can be made to earlier work it is with the “Proverbios,” or “Disparates,” a short series of 22 prints made by Goya between 1816 and 1823 but unpublished until 1864.” Frank Milner, Goya, page 23 ? 24, Published by Bison Books, UK, 1995.
