Name: FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES (1746-1828)
Brand: Tan bárbara la seguridad como el delito ('The Custody is as barbarous as the Crime') - 'The Little Prisoner'
Price: 7500.00 GBP
Availability: OutOfStock

FRANCISCO DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES (1746-1828)
Tan bárbara la seguridad como el delito ('The Custody is as barbarous as the Crime') - 'The Little Prisoner'
etching with engraving
circa 1810-15
on Arches laid paper
a fine, rich impression in dark sepia
Harris' fourth, final state, printed with the letters masked
after the First Edition published by the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1867
printing with great contrasts and much inky relief
wide margins, probably the full sheet, previously folded
other defects
the subject in very good condition
Plate 11 x 8,8 cm. (4¹⁄₄ x 3³⁄₈ in.)
Sheet 44,5 x 29,1 cm. (17¹⁄₂ x 11¹⁄₂ in.)

Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 3-7 May 1976, lot 506 (with another, earlier impression).
Acquired at the above sale; then by descent to the present owners.

L. Delteil, Le peintre graveur illustré - Francisco Goya, Paris, 1922, no. 31 (another impression ill.).
T. Harris, Goya - Engravings and Lithographs - Catalogue raisonné, Oxford, 1964, no. 26 IV, pp. 46-47 (another impression ill.).

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Lot Essay

This small, yet unforgettable print belongs to a group of three etchings of prisoners, each depicting a single male figure, shackled or chained and with leg braces, in a dark cell. An impression of all three prints was pasted into an album containing a proof set of the Desastres de la Guerra, which Goya gave to his friend Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, suggesting that they were roughly contemporary. If not in format and style, they are certainly related to the Desastres in spirit, in their empathy and anger about the suffering inflicted on individuals by the state or other authorities. The Little Prisoner, as this print became known, was never published in Goya's lifetime, and the present sheet is an impression printed after the first and only edition, published by the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1867.