Goya's Prison: - Red Square Design

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Hogarth’s audience would choose to be themselves, some sense
of humanity exists. In the Rake series, Sarah weeps at Tom’s side.
Amidst the lunacy, she nevertheless displays her sustained love
for him, or, at the very least, feelings of deepest compassion.
Now look at Goya’s inmates in Interior of a Prison: all male, and
like Tom, in rags or naked, stripped of any social status that might
once have existed. But there is no interaction between any of
them, only silence, no knowing glances towards the spectator, no
gallows humour. In their resigned wretchedness they no longer
hope to receive any visitors – not even those prison tourists that
paid to gawp at those less fortunate than themselves. These men
are going nowhere and seeing no one. This is it. Nothing. Their
existence is utterly devoid of love or compassion, until, eventually,
they will be released by death.
Hogarth and Goya differ in their approach to the depiction of
prison life principally because Hogarth sought to entertain
whilst Goya did not. Hogarth’s paintings for both the Harlot and
the Rake were translated into print form for a mass audience.
Goya’s cabinet series, as he had informed Iriate in his letter of
4th January 1794, were intended for no one other than himself.
But as he shared this body of new work with the Academicians
of San Fernando, it is likely that Goya was demonstrating to his
colleagues, as he almost certainly was to himself in the months
beforehand, that in spite of his debilitating illness, his mind, his
imagination, his ability for ‘caprice’, remained intact. In fact, not
only had Goya’s mental agility and artistic ability been preserved,
in the months of illness and recuperation he had reached greater
heights than he had previously achieved. Certainly he sought
approval from his fellow Academicians, but his eagerness to show
his cabinet paintings strongly suggests that Goya, previously
searching for a clarity of artistic direction, now knew that he had
found it.
Following his presentation of the cabinet pictures to the Academy,
Goya continued his slow rehabilitation. He summed up his
condition to Zapater in April 1794:
“I am much the same, in so far as my health, some times
raving with a mood that I myself cannot stand, other times,
more tempered, as now when I take up the pen to write
to you, and I am already tired, I can only say that Monday,
God willing, I will go to the bullfight and I would want you
to accompany me.” 17
20 Moll in Bridewell Prison
The Harlot’s Progress Scene 4
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
1733
Etching and engraving 32 x 38cm
The British Museum
21 Letter from Goya to Iriate, dated 7 January 1794,
British Library, London
Goya’s Prison – the Year of Despair