Livres & Manuscrits du XIIIe au XXIe siècle
Livres & Manuscrits du XIIIe au XXIe siècle
Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
La Tauromaquia. 1816. Première édition. Rare suite complète de 33 planches.
Lot Closed
November 29, 01:24 PM GMT
Estimate
140,000 - 180,000 EUR
Lot Details
Description
Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
La Tauromaquia.
1816.
(Delteil 224-256; Harris 204-236)
Rare première édition.
Suite complète de 33 planches, gravées à l'eau-forte, à l'aquatinte, au burin et à la pointe sèche. 6 planches avec le filigrane Morato.
In-folio oblong. Demi-veau, titre doré sur le dos (Reliure espagnole moderne).
Chaque planche : environ 305 x 420 mm
(33 planches).
The complete set of 33 etchings with burnished aquatint and lavis, drypoint and engraving, 1816, fine to very good impressions from the first edition, published by the artist, Madrid, 1816, accompanied by the title page, printed in umber ink on fine laid papers, six plates with the Morato watermark.
Bound in modern marbled boards with a leather spine with gilt tooling and lettering.
Each sheet: approx. 305 by 420mm 12 by 16½in
(33 Prints)
[On joint :]
Réédition de La Tauromaquia de Goya par Antonio de Horna publiée par la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid en 1970.
Please note this lifetime set is accompanied by the complete 1970 edition of La Tauromaquia de Goya by Antonio de Horna, published by the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid.
Delteil 224-256; Harris 204-236.
La Tauromaquia, a set of 33 prints created by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes in 1815 and 1816, illustrates the art of bullfighting from its medieval origins through to the artist’s day. In the final plates in the series, Goya illustrated the awe-inspiring feats of his contemporaries, recording or imagining actual events in the bullring and paying homage to the most celebrated toreros of his time.
When these plates were published in 1816, Goya was 70 years old and at the height of his artistic capacities. By this mature stage in his career, the subject of bullfighting had held a lifelong personal significance for the artist. In these plates, as Robert Hughes describes: ‘Goya was looking back, mainly to experiences of his youth, when he was an aficionado and may even, so legend and rumour had it, have got in the ring with his own sword… Charles Yriarte, one of Goya’s earliest biographers, wrote that he had seen a letter from him to Martín Zapater (now lost) signed “Francisco, el de los toros [he of the bulls].” Certainly, he always found pleasure and sometimes a kind of psychic healing—a relief from depression—in going to the corrida.’ (Robert Hughes, Goya, p. 359).
This present suite of Goya’s Tauromaquia is an excellent example of the first and only lifetime edition of the series. Printed in umber ink, the 33 tonal impressions in this set offer a marvellous sense of space, movement and three dimensionality, demonstrating the graphic masterpiece as Goya would have originally envisaged it.