Francisco de Goya valuation

Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) was born at Fuendetodos, near Saragossa, and made his name in Madrid painting cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory before becoming a painter to the court; in 1799 he was appointed First Court Painter to Charles IV, whose family he painted in 1800. An illness in 1792–93 left him deaf. In 1799 he published Los Caprichos, eighty etchings satirising Spanish society, and during and after the Peninsular War he made the etchings later published as The Disasters of War and painted The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808, both now in the Prado. In his seventies he painted the Black Paintings on the walls of his house outside Madrid, later transferred to canvas and also in the Prado, and he spent his last years in Bordeaux.

Goya's paintings are mostly in Spanish museums, and those that come to market raise questions of attribution, since pupils such as Asensio Julià and many imitators worked in his manner and his fame attracted forgers. His prints are what most collectors own, and with them the edition is everything: Los Caprichos was published in 1799 and La Tauromaquia in 1816, in his lifetime, while The Disasters of War and Los Disparates were first published in the 1860s, and the plates of all four series were printed again and again in Madrid well into the twentieth century. Lifetime proofs and first editions are worth many times more than the later editions, which are identified by the paper, the inking and the wear of the plates.