In 2006, Belle Waring and Elizabeth Fee wrote in the American Journal of Public Health about Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s series of etchings entitled The Disasters of War: “His is a vision of war without the consolation of chivalry, religion without mercy, and despair without redemption.” Created as a reaction to war in Spain in the 1800s, Goya’s work is equally a relevant characterization of atrocity today.

Paul Bouvier wrote in 2011 in the International Review of the Red Cross that Goya “was born on 30 March 1746 in Fuendetodos, a village near Saragossa, in Aragon. After being apprenticed to a painter and spending time in Italy, Goya married at the age of 27. In 1775 he settled in Madrid.” In 1789, Goya was named the official artist of the Spanish monarchy. Four years later, the artist became seriously ill and permanently deaf.

“The year is 1808,” wrote an unidentified author for Park West Gallery in 2019, “and French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte has seized control of Spain… However, the Spaniards refuse to accept the reign of the Bonapartes, and on May 2, 1808, the Spanish War of Independence begins. This uprising became a part of the Peninsular War, which lasted from 1808 to 1814.”

At the time, rulers employed artists to attend battles and depict in their work a vision of war skewed to glorify the warriors of that side of the fighting. Bouvier explains, “In Goya’s time most works of art depicted the death of a hero, representing war as positive, beautiful, and glorious.” As official court painter of Spain, Goya was responsible for depicting General José de Palafox as he and his army defended the city of Zaragoza. Goya’s “Disasters of War” would be a very different account of the conflict.

About The Disasters of War, Esme Garlake wrote in Medium in 2023 that “art historians generally view them as a visual protest against the violent conflicts between Spain and Napoleon’s occupying French forces.” At age 62, Goya started working on this project in 1810. Over the following decade, he produced a series of 82 prints. It was not published until 35 years after the artist’s death. The Roswell Museum’s collection only contains one of the prints in the series. The series can be broken down into three sections: atrocities in battle, famine, and the war’s aftermath. Art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau is quoted by Alastair Sooke in a 2014 BBC article as saying, “Each one is a powerful, original work of art in its own right, yet linked to the others with a common theme, including the way their titles – terse comments, questions, or cries of outrage – connect them, and read on from one to another.”

The caption of print number four translates to English as “The women show courage.” “Goya portrays the role of women,” Bouvier wrote, “showing their courage and vulnerability at the same time.” The caption for print number five, which is in the Roswell Museum’s collection, is “And they are fearless,” referring to previous print’s caption. Bouvier described this print by saying “a fighting woman clutches her child under one arm, while spearing the enemy with another.”

The war officially ended in 1814 at which time the previous monarch, King Fernando VII, resumed his authoritarian rule. Ten years later, Goya fled Fernando’s tyrannical regime, living the rest of his life in exile, ironically in France. There, the artist died in 1828.

For a 2008 Brooklyn Rail article, Thomas Micchelli wrote, “The Spanish War of Independence launched the modern plague of total war, with all of its ever-intensifying efficiency and cruelty. The mutilated bodies Goya drew with such compassion could be from Iraq, Darfur, El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Guatemala.” In 2025, Goya’s work can similarly visually describe what is happening in Gaza with its complete devastation and death of, as of this writing, 67,869 Palestinians. The parallel of photos and videos coming out of Gaza today is visible in Goya’s work. In a 1937 book about The Disasters of War, Elie Faure wrote, “Goya describes nothing and evokes everything, but his secret symbolism is nevertheless consistent… It is a manner of seeing things, a manner of speaking and of being. Take, for example, the uniforms of the French soldiers in his etchings. They are not only badly proportioned, but shown as sketchily as possible; they have only a remote connection with the actual uniforms and might be those of any nation’s army.”

Despite the fragile ceasefire that went into effect on October 10, the conditions in Gaza continue to be dire. Despite the aid blockade, some groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, have managed to maintain a small presence throughout the conflict. Bouvier wrote, “It is important that humanitarian workers should be able to recognize psychological trauma so as to be capable of… comprehending their own experience of, and reactions to, extreme violence… Who will listen to our cries of distress? Whom can we tell what happened? Who is there to listen? Who can understand what it means – the mass of decomposing bodies, the stench, the nausea, the shame, horror, and dehumanization? Even our friends and loved ones politely turn their heads.”

It is also widely recognized that famine has taken hold because of insufficient aid entering Gaza. While not represented in the Roswell Museum’s collection, the middle third of Goya’s The Disasters of War focuses on the famine in Madrid that was a direct result of the war. About this, Bouvier wrote that famine is “cruel because of the suffering it causes, but cruel also when it is the result of indifference, cynicism, and complacency – or when it is intentional, since famine can be a weapon in disguise, the product of either political negligence or deliberate policy.”

Referring to print number 32 in the series, Faure wrote, “’Why?’ he asks… And here the question reveals a kind of metaphysical anxiety, for it is the question which every man conscious of being a man must inevitably ask himself when war breaks out, as to the motives of the war, its aims, its means, the claim often made for it that ennobles men—which is certainly true—and the reproach so often hurled at it that makes it viler—which is certainly not untrue.” We can hope the ceasefire in Gaza holds, but there are many potential perils ahead, such as the possibility the conflict continues, expands, and escalates. Like Goya, we are witnesses to war. Will what comes next disillusion us as it did him? Or will we, through engaged witnessing, act to ensure a tomorrow more peaceful than today?

The statement “It’s Your Art” is meant to emphasize that the Roswell Museum’s collection is your collection. Despite the museum’s closure due to the October 2024 flood, staff continue to work behind the scenes on care for and conservation of collection objects. Please stay tuned for more from the Roswell Museum. We appreciate the outpouring of support from the community during our closure. And remember, “It’s Your Art.”