Fight with Cudgels

Fight with Cudgels
Spanish: Duelo a garrotazos
ArtistFrancisco Goya
Yearc. 1820–1823
MediumOil mural transferred to canvas
Dimensions123 cm × 266 cm (48 in × 105 in)
LocationMuseo del Prado, Madrid
Photograph by Jean Laurent, taken around 1874 before the transfer to canvas. Though the lower legs are obscured, Charles Yriarte, who viewed the paintings at the Quinta, interpreted that the duelists fought on a grass field, not knee-deep in mud.[1]

Fight with Cudgels (Spanish: Riña a garrotazos or Duelo a garrotazos), called The Strangers or Cowherds in the inventories,[2] is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Goya did not give names to his Black Paintings. These names are courtesy of art historians.[3] One of the series of Black Paintings Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1820 and 1823, it depicts two men fighting one another with cudgels, as they seem to be trapped knee-deep in a quagmire of mud or sand.

In 1819, Goya purchased a house on the banks of the Manzanares near Madrid named Quinta del Sordo ("Villa of the Deaf Man"). It was a small two-story house that was named after a previous occupant who had been deaf, although Goya had also been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he moved to Bordeaux, Goya produced a series of 14 works, which he painted with oils directly onto the walls of the house. Fight with Cudgels had been situated in the upper room of Quinta del Sordo.[4]

  1. ^ "La cara oculta de las 'pinturas negras'". www.publico.es. 2010-12-29. Retrieved 2024-06-01.
  2. ^ "The Black Paintings: Excerpted from the book GOYA by Xavier de Salas". Erik Weems. 1997–2006. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
  3. ^ Licht, Fred (1979). Goya, the origins of the modern temper in art. New York: Universe Books. p. 186. ISBN 978-0876632949.
  4. ^ Richard Schickel and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The World of Goya 1746-1828 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1968), 172.