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What Courage! (plate 7)

Portfolio TitleLos Desastres de la Guerra
Artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746 - 1828)
Dateca. 1810-1820; 1st edition, 1863
MediumEtching, aquatint, drypoint, burin and burnisher
DimensionsPlate: 6 1/16 × 8 1/8 inches (15.4 × 20.64 cm)
Mat: 21 1/4 × 16 inches (53.98 × 40.64 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number38-30/5
On View
Not on view
Collections
Exhibition History

Spanish Exhibition, Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK, 1940.

Exhibition, Kansas City Art Institute, MO, April 22-May 21, 1967, no cat.

Inked in Time: Six Centuries of Printed Masterpieces, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 22-May 31, 1998, no cat.

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 5-November 11, 2007, no cat., as What Courage!, plate 7 from Disasters of War.

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 26-August 10, 2014, no cat., as What Courage!, plate 7 from Disasters of War.

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 23-July 30, 2017, no cat., as What Courage!, plate 7 from Disasters of War.

Gallery Label
This image celebrates the heroism of a young woman during the French Emperor Napoleon’s attack on the Spanish town of Zaragoza in 1808. When all around her were dead, Agustina de Aragón scaled the pile of corpses and set off a cannon against the attacking French. Francisco de Goya’s brittle but assertive lines are cloaked in shadow through his use of aquatint, a printmaking technique that creates washes of color. These tones enhance the shaded areas created by lines incised into the copper plate.
Provenance

Dr. Julius Hofmann (1840-1913), Vienna, by 1913 [1];

In his posthumous sale, Kostbare Kupferstiche von alten Meistern des XV. - XVII. Jahrhunderts, Dubletten des Britischen Museums in London und der Kupferstichsammlung Albertina in Wien: ein Prachtexemplar der frühen niederländischen Ausgabe von 1465 der Biblia Pauperum; eine berühmte Sammlung von französischen Farbstichen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts; die bedeutende Goya-Sammlung von Dr. Julius Hofmann, Wien, C.G. Boerner, Leipzig, November 14-15, 1924;

With Alden Galleries, Kansas City, MO, December 19, 1938;

Purchased from Alden Galleries by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1938.

NOTES:

[1] Lugt 1264

Published References

Kostbare Kupferstiche von alten Meistern des XV. - XVII. Jahrhunderts, Dubletten des Britischen Museums in London und der Kupferstichsammlung Albertina in Wien: ein Prachtexemplar der frühen niederländischen Ausgabe von 1465 der Biblia Pauperum; eine berühmte Sammlung von französischen Farbstichen des XVIII. Jahrhunderts; die bedeutende Goya-Sammlung von Dr. Julius Hofmann, Wien (Leipzig: C.G. Boerner, November 14-15, 1924).

A collection of catalogs, vol. 1, Spanish Exhibition (Tulsa, OK: Philbrook Art Center, 1940).

Tomás Harris, Goya Engravings and Lithographs (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1964), 1: no. 127, pp. 68-69, (repro.), Qué valor! (What courage!); 2: no. 127, pp. 186-87, (repro.), as Que [sic] valor! (What courage!).

Pierre Gassier and Juliet Wilson-Bareau, The Life and Complete Work of Francisco Goya, 2nd ed. (New York: Harrison House, 1981), no. 1000, pp. 217-18, 257, 268, (repro.), as Que [sic] valor! (What courage!).

Alfonso E. Pérez-Sánchez and Julián Gállego, Goya: The Complete Etchings and Lithographs (Munich: Prestel, 1995), no. 7, p. 95, (repro.), as What courage!.

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 143-44, 314, (repro.), as Los Desastres de la Guerra: Que [sic] Valor! (What Courage!).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.


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