Original etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper from ‘Los Caprichos’

From the fifth edition of 210, published between 1881-1886 by the Calcografia for the Real Academia

This artwork is framed

Image size: 150 x 200 mm

Frame size: 335 x 410 mm

Goya’s commentary:

The young woman left her home as a little girl. She did her apprenticeship at Cadiz, she came to Madrid: there she ‘won the lottery’. She goes down to Prado and hears a grimy, decrepit old woman begging for her alms; she sends her away, the old woman persists. The fashionable young woman turns round and finds - who would have thought it - that the poor old woman is her mother.

Los Caprichos:

The suite was first published in 1799 and Goya is thought to have sold only 27 copies before withdrawing it from circulation due to the Inquisition. Most of the remaining copies of the edition were alter purchased by King Charles IV of Spain. The work was an enlightened, tour-de-force critique of 18th century Spain, and humanity in general. The informal style as well as the depiction of contemporary society found in the Caprichos, makes them and Goya himself, a precursor to the modernist movement almost a century later.