Self-Portrait

Goya’s sophisticated printmaking techniques are among the many aspects of his work that have earned him a place as one of the first truly modern artists. The complex blending of media in this self-portrait allowed him to achieve velvety surfaces and wash-like effects, along with penetrating linear definition and expressive hatching. At the time of this self-portrait, Goya was working on the Caprichos prints (published February 1799), which brought him international fame. The frontispiece to that collection was another etched self-portrait, in profile, suggesting Goya’s role as observer of the world he satirized in his imagery. The view of the artist as outsider was still very new at the turn of the nineteenth century, but with Romanticism it quickly became current.