"Deconstruct Goya and its myth" . That is the purpose of the curator of a remarkable exhibition that opens its doors today in Agen (southern France). Adrien Enfedaque presents it as a "revaluation" of the painter who would go from "solo artist" to "head of a workshop" and "head of a school".

The other side of the deconstruction is that four of the six paintings that the museum of this French city possesses should be attributed to Aragonese disciples , as EL MUNDO has been able to know. The sample has as scientific advisor Juliet Wilson Bareau, a renowned expert, who said in 2008 that El Coloso did not leave Goya's brushes .

Agen, a city of less than 40,000 inhabitants, halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse, has an art museum thanks to the legacy of an illustrious son of the town, Count Damase Chaudordy . In love with Spain, the French ambassador to Madrid, it was he who bought the goyas .

The exhibition, 80 works between paintings, prints and drawings, is in the beautiful church of the Jacobins, the only remnant of the Dominican convent, destroyed during the French Revolution. Here Enrique III of England signed the municipal charter of Agen, which belonged to the English crown for 200 years, tells us the mayor Jean Dionis du Séjour.

In the stillness of the Gothic temple, EL MUNDO spoke with Adrian Enfedaque, curator of the exhibition and curator of the Museum of Fine Arts. "For a long time, Goya was considered a solitary artist , a true myth. This exhibition attempts to deconstruct Goya. Reasonably, with arguments that come from legal documents and laboratory analysis. Deconstruct Goya and its myth not to take away works but to show that Goya headed a workshop and was aware of being a head of a school and value his art, his work, his paintings, his engravings, his drawings through the work of his assistants and collaborators. "

This demystifying approach has found the scientific support of Juliet Wilson Bareau, a young enthusiast over 80 years old who guides us. His role, according to Enfedaque, has been key: "He was one of the first to review the inventory of 1812 as a legal document that has allowed him to provide proof of the existence of a workshop. Because in this document there are many pictures that are marked with an X followed by a number.When these paintings are compared there are authentic works, autographs by Goya and others that are not . Everything comes out of his workshop and, in that legal document, everything is considered to be from Goya. for Goya there was no difference between his own work and those of his assistants. All the works that came out of his workshop to be sold as Goya carried the Goya brand as in a company ".

The investigations conclude that four of Agen's six goyas - The balloon , Scene of whims , The elegant couple and Mass would be the product of his workshop. The self- portrait and the outline of the equestrian Portrait of Ferdinand VII would have the author as author, detailed in Agen.

Enfedaque states that his "exhibition does not aspire to determine attributions. He seeks to discuss. It is a good time to gather works to be able to discuss Goya's attributions and to see how Goya and his workshop worked."

The commissioner sees the time to "revalue the atélier concept" . He defends that the attendees "were true artists who created, true, from the master's works but innovated with their own style. For example, Asensio Julià sometimes retakes works by Goya. There was a demand for copies of works by Goya and Asensio Julià can assume them. Sometimes he does them in his own style. That's the interesting thing. The theme, the composition takes us to Goya, the style to this artist. "

It is not the first time that the Goya workshop has been discussed. But the first exhibition conceived with this approach. "All his authentic works, autographs, could be used by his assistants and collaborators as a repertoire of motifs. It is very interesting to find motifs drawn from Goya's drawings, prints or paintings in his collaborators' paintings," explains Enfedaque, who has put all the heart in the exhibition that shows, for the first time, the last letter that the Spanish artist wrote.

When we ask him what Agen's neighbors are going to think about this lack of distribution and his approach, he responds: " For me they are still goyas . That is what we have to understand. I say that it is a revaluation of the work and the artist Goya and especially the way to define Goya. "

I am not so sure what Damase Chaudordy (1826-1899) would think, that it was who bequeathed the goyas to Agen. Scion of a bourgeois family in this city, involved in politics, Damase was a brilliant career diplomat and occasional deputy . He passed through Weimar, Rome, London, Copenhagen ...

But where he felt at ease was in Madrid, where he was assigned three times. As ambassador (1874-1881), he became friends with Cánovas and Alfonso XII who was given by a Rafael (today attributed to his school), La Virgen, Jesús and San Juan Bautista .

Also with Federico Madrazo, painter and director of the Prado. He was his advisor in the purchase of 16th century furniture, ceramics and paintings. It was he who sold Goya's paintings. Madrazo had acquired them from Xavier, son of Goya , María, granddaughter, or Valentín Carderera, a great admirer of Goya who bought many works from Xavier. The pedigree of Agen's oil paintings is thus well established.

Chaudordy, always single, died in Paris. But he bequeathed his house, a castle, much of his furniture, Sevres porcelain, Spanish ceramics, Flemish tapestries and 200 works of art to his hometown. Among them, the goyas . Of the genius and / or his atélier.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Art
  • culture
  • France

Culture Six months of the Notre Dame fire: the slow, expensive and difficult recovery of the cathedral

ArteFrancia folds to Chinese censorship to open a headquarters of the Pompidou Museum in Shanghai

CultureMondrian before the squares