Contrary to past projects that have portrayed Goya as an isolated figure, obsessed with darkness and death, Janis Tomlinson's deeply researched biography presents a painter convinced of his own genius and capacity for creation, one with an unrelenting drive, whose great sociability and skill in navigating court intrigues will come as a revelation to scholars and general readers alike". But for the general reader’s purposes, Hughes still serves Goya better.About the Book "This biography, authored by one of the world's leading experts on Goya, makes available never-before translated documents of his life, and uses new research in Spanish, including detailed information on his youth, family, commissions, correspondence, and travels to create the most complete portrait yet of an often elusive artist and the dramatically changing society in which he lived and worked. Tomlinson has supplied a cool and corrective scholarly chronicle. Where Goya first went to school how he paid for his trip to Italy to what extent he employed assistants how, once deaf, he picked up signing what Javier, his one surviving child, did with his life-these common-sense questions have, I expect, been resolved by Tomlinson to her own satisfaction so long ago that it does not occur to her now to discuss them. But the doyenne of a field of study may not be its best advocate. Her revisionary examinations of what Goya did and why he did it seem generally plausible to me, and a bonus of the book is her close focus on the changing city life of Madrid. Tomlinson’s detailed account of this long and productive life is discriminating and trustworthy.
Tomlinson, a scholar who has been publishing on Goya for over three decades, is concerned to disentangle him from the retroactive politicizations of his admirers.
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