Having died only four years apart from each other, it seems inevitable that these two extremely influential artists would have had some striking similarities in their work, from their preferred media to their actual subject matter; the large host of struggles they faced led them on a surprisingly similar path, depicting their own mental illness through painting.
My practical work is what has led me to writing this essay today. My work has gone from an exploration of sinister, nightmarish themes to studying how fear of madness can be portrayed in art; more specifically, in these two artists. Goya had a very prominent fear of going insane. Despite how many people feel he chose the life of solitude, being so out of touch with the world scared him, and eventually did (along with other factors) drive him mad. Gericault’s family history of grandparents and uncles deemed to be ‘insane’ uncover a lesser-known connection to that fear, painting the image of a man who kept his health private for fear of public perception. In my own work I have been studying both of them, mirroring their painting techniques and color pallets, going from producing artist copies to producing my own work in their styles. In this essay, I will be exploring the ways in which these men portrayed mental illness in their work, and the different manifestations this could have in their work, and the different intentions that the artists had with covering such a taboo subject.
Goya was born in 1746 to a lower middle-class family in Spain. His life was fairly linear and progressive, going to study painting in Madrid as a teenager and building himself up as an artist from there. His style of oil painting was remarkable, even catching the attention of the royals. The royal family of Spain commissioned Goya to do their portraits, which earned Goya the title of an extremely respected and well-known painter. In a cruel twist of fate, he fell victim to illness. Bedridden for many months, the artist lost his hearing and plummeted into a world of darkness. It is impossible to imagine how the painter must have felt, now unable to communicate with anyone. This combined with the fact that the country was reeling from the Peninsular War plunged his mind into despair; it is said that after witnessing the horrors of war, Goya lost all faith in humanity. The amount of loss experienced by the painter is almost unimaginable – just when it seems it can’t get any worse, he lost six out of eight of his children to illness in their infancy. From 1801 he was no longer a court painter for the royals, and went on to explore much darker themes in his paintings: war, violence, religion, poverty – all of humanity’s darkest vices. He was living in a farmhouse totally alone, cut off from the world; this isolation drove him mad – by 1819 he had begun painting on the walls, creating a series known as ‘The Black Paintings’.
In comparison to the life of despair that Goya led, Gericault, on the surface, appeared to be more composed. However, a deeper look into his personal life tells us he had a similar mind-set to Goya’s’. Theodore Gericault was very familiar with the concept of suffering, which is why he chose that to be the main theme he depicted in his work – frequent horse-riding accidents and infections led him to have poor health. He was extremely passionate about horse riding, despite all of the health implications it had on him: tumors on his spine, sciatica, and also depression and pneumonia. The fact that he continued pursuing these hobbies in spite of their effects shows he was a thrill seeker, and definitely unstable. The artist chose to not have anesthesia whilst his tumors were being operated on, so that he could watch in the mirror during the procedure! Health conditions this severe are certain to have an effect on someone’s work – Gericault lived a very short life, and so his paintings were very taboo for the time, most likely due to him feeling as though he was running out of time, and wanting to incite strong reactions from people in order to ensure he left his imprint on the art world.
Both of these artists were working during the Romantic era in art; a movement dedicated to eradicating old ways, expressing feelings and a newfound interest in the natural world and psychology. Whilst this actually may sound like an ideal period to explore mental health, it was the opposite. Asylums were called ‘madhouses’, and those deemed ‘insane’ were left to rot. Knowledge of disorders was basically non-existent; no diagnosis of schizophrenia, or depression, or anxiety. The artists were both alive during a period in the 1700s in which no legislations existed yet; it was perfectly legal, and common, to just state someone was insane and have them locked away forever. It was only in 1774 – about halfway through Goya’s’ life – when a law was passed saying that actual proof of illness was needed to admit someone to a madhouse, and madhouse owners had to have licenses! Knowing how the artists would have been treated explains Goya’s isolation, and his portrayal of suffering as metaphorical – fear of public perception and the consequences of being deemed ‘ill’ could hasten his downfall. Similarly, Gericault would have had to suppress and censor himself – despite contributing to society’s judgement of mental illness, through his decision to exaggerate the asylum patients’ physical appearance and using the background to reflect their mental state. The nervous breakdown that he is documented to have suffered, and even rumored stay in the very asylum he painted at, further explains his probe into the minds of the insane. Physiognomy was a ‘science’ on the rise, and was promoted by a close friend of the artist: it was the belief that a person’s facial features could be directly linked to their mental state.
The work of Goya’s that interests me is only the paintings from 1800 onwards, in which we see a massive shift in his style. Whilst he remained an oil painter his whole life, the use of color is what changed the most dramatically. From almost exclusively using warms hues like brown and bronze, with accents of white, to overpowering earth tones and thick black backgrounds that seem to swallow the image whole. The lack of color, with the exception of blood reds that he sometimes added in, conveys how he saw the world; bleak, hopeless and without color. Subjects depicted are being swallowed up by the darkness, which is his way of commenting on society, and how the people depicted (the poor and neglected) are viewed as literally nothing, and left to die and fade into darkness. This technique is mirrored in my own work, as I use oppressive and dark backgrounds in my oil paintings, to depict the same intent. His brush strokes are always aggressive, using impasto techniques to convey the anger that he felt in his fragile state. It’s a disturbing image, imagining the artist locked away in darkness, unable to communicate with anyone; painting as his only outlet, and it shows in the raw emotion that he painted with, wanting to show every drop of rage and hurt he felt.
On the other hand, Gericault’s portraits are all done with feathery brush strokes, conveying diligence and care. It is clear he spent a lot of time on them, and wasn’t as emotional as Goya was whilst doing them. He also uses earth tones, once again making subjects look insignificant and like they could crumble away into the Earth at any second, and nobody would notice or care – which was true in the 1800s for those deemed insane. However, he does use impasto technique on the skin, which ages the subjects immensely. They look so weathered and worn down, through the layers of oil paint stacked up on top of places like the cheek and forehead. The layers connote to the suffering that they have endured, all built up, tirelessly. So, both artists portrayed mental illness in their work through an absence of color, to portray how those suffering were abandoned by society and lacked any kind of color or happiness in their lives. Furthermore, they both layer paint, but with different intentions; Gericault’s’ to show weariness, accumulating on the face to show in the same way that a physical illness would – he is making the exterior match the interior. The amassment of paint is deliberate. Parts of the skin were consciously chosen: the forehead, for example – because those are areas in which skin appears the most weathered. Goya’s is to show his own emotions; a frenzied rush of paint application, that is untidy – it was more important for him to do the image in the moment, exactly how he felt it, than to have accuracy. Goya’s style reflected his own mental state, whereas for Gericault it was more of the subject matter that portrayed his feelings.
However, Goya produced these paintings at a point in his life in which he was dealing with a lot of loss; he no longer worked for the royals. The artist was now deaf, as well as losing his vision, and no longer able to afford as many pigments. Due to this, his color choices were also done out of necessity, juxtaposing to Gericault’s conscious decision to portray the mentally ills’ life as desaturated. Gericault had found a lot of success as an artist after travelling to England; his career was an upward slope until his death, unlike Goya’s. The difference in their statuses is also shown through how Gericault’s portraits are based loosely on ‘science’ of physiognomy; he had close friends who were in the psychology field. Goya, on the other hand, was totally alone – all concepts came from his own imagination. Therefore, we see just how terrible his mental state was – cut off from most influences, all of the disturbing and graphic concepts all originated solely from his own mind.
A difference in the two that I find interesting is their subject matter. Goya’s is all metaphorical; we infer what he is saying about society, from what he painted, which are all nightmarish images, that are nowhere near true to life. Goya wants the viewer to make their own connections and assumptions, rather than telling us exactly what he was going through. The paintings all depict suffering and violence, with common motifs of hunger and blood. Humans are portrayed in an animalistic way, which whilst depicting a message about how those less fortunate are treated, the graphic nature and outlandish concepts also show us how he was losing his grip on reality. Gericault was commissioned by the asylum to do portraits of the patients. It is a very classical portrayal of mental illness, in the sense that he makes it easy for the viewer to understand what is being shown, and makes it even more succinct with the titles: ‘Portrait of a kleptomaniac’ for example – describes exactly what is shown. Therefore, they express mental illness in a vastly different way; Gericault through showing others, who are obviously suffering, and Goya through the viewer making inferences, and seeing his direct experiences. Furthermore, Goya wants us to suffer too, by making the paintings so graphic and hard to look at, but Gericault is just creating awareness. The bitterness and anger Goya feels is further illustrated by this – he is bringing us down with him.
In the painting ‘Two Old Ones Eating Soup’, Goya sticks to a limited color palette, of strictly earth tones. This presents them as animalistic, as they have no real chromaticity to them, they appear to just be blending in with the scenery and dark background behind them. As a result, Goya seems to be commenting on society, of how the poverty stricken are left to fade into the earth in which they roam, whilst the rich live in luxury. This commentary is further illustrated in the line of the painting. The brush strokes are directional, and appear messy, which whilst this reflects his erratic state of mind, it also conveys the misery of the poor. Their faces appear to have almost no skin on them – looking like hollow skulls, most likely a result of their malnourishment. They are basically just dead men, sitting at the table, left to die and fade away into the shadows. Due to the ambiguity, this painting has been subject to many interpretations – one critic believes that “the figure on the right is death, who carries a list of souls that will be taken to the afterlife”. Another theory is that the work is related to another of his black paintings – ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’, as Saturn is “linked to old age and death”. As a result of this, Goya’s intent is proven – by depicting such nightmarish and ominous scenes, he leaves it up to the viewer to decide what is happening, and make them see the world through his eyes. From what I know of Goya’s’ personal life, he was deeply affected by what he was seeing in society at the time; after the war he had lost all belief in humanity, watching so much death and destruction. It’s a great contrast from the royal portraits of monarchs he was commissioned to do, to him then going on to encapsulate the misery of the poor; it reflects how much it was affecting him – coming to terms with the realities others face, or more was forced to as a result of his own isolation. The juxtaposition gives me mixed emotions: it seems disheartening, looking at the royal portraits and then these solemn paintings. But at the same time, it is admirable seeing someone once from that high status now creating art with important social commentary.
In the painting ‘Insane woman’, the tone of Gericault’s work feels more sad and timid from the lack of ‘shock factor’, rather than Goya’s clear anger which he showed with flashes of red and graphic imagery. This is an insight into Gericault’s mental state – more stable and more subdued – and also connotes to the nature of the patients. This is also shown with the positioning of their eyes; it illustrates the shame that patients would have had, being deemed as ‘mad’ during the Romantic era. As they were seen to not be humans, it is conveyed through how the woman is not looking at us – it creates a very clear disconnection between the viewer and the sitter, like how it would have been during that period in time. Furthermore, Gericault – similar to Goya – also uses solely earth tones in this portrait. Whilst Goya’s choice to do this showed his commentary on poverty, Gericault’s shows how the world of the mentally ill lacked color. The sitter also seems to be fading into the background – it’s hard to distinguish where her robes end and the background begins. It reflects the state of asylums (or ‘madhouses’) of that time; their lack of humanity is shown in the way she isn’t standing out. Her skin is an exaggerated shade of yellow, as well; Gericault did this in an attempt to make her look even more frail; to convey her mental sickness in a way most people would be able to understand: through their appearance.
Gericault was never one to shy away from controversy; having come from a well-off family, it has been said that he had ‘nothing to lose’ – combine this with his failing health, and you have ‘political dynamite’. His most infamous piece of work preceded the French Revolution. It was the first period of time where the French citizens began to really question those in charge and protest against them. A story caught the world by storm, and lit a fire in Gericault: the truth about what had happened on the ship, the ‘Medusa’ got leaked to the press by two survivors. A boat containing a crew of both upper-class men and people of middle to lower class encountered trouble and had to abandon ship. Of the seven rafts, six were designated to the higher-class crew – and only one to the rest. One hundred and fifty-three men were crammed onto one raft, and what followed can only be described as Hell. A rapid descent into mutiny, madness and cannibalism meant that only thirteen survived. The painting ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ is huge, around twenty-three feet tall. The drawing plans that the artist made for the painting show he scrapped initial plans to show more of the ocean in favor of having the raft take up almost every inch of the canvas. As a result, the viewer is suffocated – this feeling is further perpetuated by Gericault’s choice to reduce the size of the rescue ship, making it a mere speck in the distance. The one sliver of hope in the painting is almost undetectable, and becomes insignificant upon looking at all of the corpses. The lack of vibrancy on the raft is a direct reflection of the lack of hope; what good could possibly come now that one-hundred and fifty-three men are dead and the rest irreversibly changed? Use of earth tones connotes to the fact that the men are completely at the mercy of, and victims of, the elements. This painting is a glaring reflection of the artist: Gericault was an extremely sharp man, with every artistic decision having a specific purpose and intention behind it. The mental struggles of both artists gave them a sense of clarity, in which they saw the world for what it really was, and made art to directly question and defy those in power.
To conclude, I do not think it can be said that one artist was more successful in their portrayal of mental illness than the other. Gericault created awareness with his fairly objective and solemn portraits, but Goya’s work really opens up the mind of a person struggling with insanity and lays it out in a painted form. He made the viewers feel his own pain, which could be argued to be more effective than the use of knowledge and accuracy. We don’t just get into the mind of the people depicted in the paintings; we get into his as well. As a Spanish court painter, he was very well respected, friends with the most elite. His journey into portraying society’s darkest issues transformed him into a more controversial figure, and his deafness meant he only had a handful of very close friends. Gericault came from a wealthy family and attended prestigious schools growing up. His career, as previously stated, was on a steady incline until the very end of his life. Due to his outward appearance of a perceptive and put-together man, more people listened to him; I think this is shown in the infamy that Goya’s black paintings has in comparison to Gericault’s. However, both men used their insight into suffering and discrimination to create political explosions.