As every student of eighteenth-century studies knows, the Enlightenment reasoned away old superstitions and consigned any remaining vestiges to the category of the ‘Gothic’ anti-Catholic stereotype. And anyway, witchcraft belongs on the Early Modern programme. But at the current Courtauld Gallery exhibition we have witches on broomsticks and carrying grizzly bundles of sacrificial babies well into the nineteenth century. So Francisco Goya (1746-1828) appears an aberration, an ‘old regime’ court painter, but with the questioning, scepticism and outrage that eventually led to a period of hasty self-exile from Spain. The selection of his personal and private drawings reveals how the figure of the witch still had significant cultural potency at that time in Spain, and attests to the contemporary misogynistic view of old women but also to Goya’s curiously subtle sympathy as he liberated them from an earthbound predictability. His witches are neither biblical and apocalyptic visions nor literary apparitions, and do not point to the exotic sirens which evolved later in the nineteenth century, such as those shown at a British Museum exhibition recently (Witches and Wicked Bodies, September 2014 to January 2015). His representations largely derive from the proverbs and folklore of rural communities and are rooted as much in the simple woodcut illustration as the sophisticated engraving. Their bodies suggest the immediacy of observation rather than the stylized conventions of the studio.

An introductory panel in the exhibition informs us that drawings from Goya’s private albums were ‘…born from his passionate interest in human nature: our frailties, passions and fears.’ The private drawings by any artist tend to invite our attention as we hope to learn more intimate and controversial details of his life. The formal commissions and royal portraits undertaken by Goya seem all the more precarious as assertions of power and stability when contrasted with the raw energy of his drawings which disrupts any complacent picture of social order. Although the Courtauld has only one of these in its collection (Cantar y bailar, ‘Singing and dancing’, c.1818-23), the exhibition which has been built on this is remarkable. The entire known contents of one of his albums, known as The Witches and Old Women, or Album D, has been assembled from over sixteen collections around the world, and can be viewed in the original numbered order around the walls. Only one drawing is missing, but its number has been deliberately omitted so that when it is located, it can take its rightful place. The curators are optimistic, given that a drawing from another album surfaced only last year. Eight albums were compiled by the artist and cast light on his thoughts during his final thirty-five years, and examples from several have been included to contextualise Album D. They occupy the hazy ground of finished, composed, but lightly drawn self-standing images which are not preparatory sketches or presentation drawings. Few include any context or background, so we are compelled to consider the animated figures on their own terms, and can universalise their meanings. They often have a disturbingly modern relevance, one of the reasons why Goya has earned his place among the greatest European artists.

The first room sets the album in the context of Goya’s earlier prints and drawings, demonstrating that he was exploring such themes from the early 1790s. He was an assiduous witness to contemporary cultural practices. The iconic The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (‘Los Caprichos’ 43, c.1797-8, London, British Museum) is displayed in its first-edition 1799 bound volume, and as the first exhibit sets the tone. This print seems to exemplify the perils unfolding in those revolutionary years if reason is not the watchword which will protect society from chaos. The artist’s porte-crayons are abandoned on the table as he sleeps, the table resembling a plinth on which appears the carved warning and accusatory title. The text is part of the image, more than a label, bringing to mind paintings such as Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1636-8) for example, in which mysterious writing is the startling focus. This time the written warning is alarmingly unheeded. The artist has a crucial role and must be vigilant for us all because chaotic disorder lies in wait in the guise of wide-eyed bats, owls and other creatures of the night. The print conjures the menace of Henri Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781) and points to Richard Dadd’s strange visions (for example The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke, 1855-64) or John Auster Fitzgerald’s The Painter’s Dream (c.1850) which directly references The Sleep of Reason… but from a distinctly Victorian aesthetic perspective. Goya’s artist seems to sleep through the perils of his own time but equally through subsequent reworking of his vision by Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist artistic movements. The print’s essential message is not however the only one on display in this exhibition, since other images celebrate the exuberance of the transgressive ‘other’, usually old, ugly and female and yet defiantly and playfully projecting sexual awareness and enjoyment. Reason does not always seem a compelling imperative.

The print is flanked by another display case which contains the Madrazo 1 (Fortuny) volume (c.1866-68, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), a book containing empty cut pages which formerly held fifty of Goya’s drawings and which has its own interesting history. It is included as an example of the different mountings employed to preserve Goya’s work, but its stark blank spaces provoke thoughts on the complexities of ‘albums’, how alternative juxtapositions create new meanings, and thus on how the curators’ arrangement of the work we are examining is intended to guide us. There is also a sense that the drawings have flown from their confinement onto the walls and invite our engagement. The labels allow us to make our own judgements, using terms such as ‘defies clear interpretation’, or ‘enigmatic subject’ along with ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’. We are told that subject matter is ‘connected with Goya’s private views’. Although these views are hinted at rather than expanded upon, intense conversations taking place between some visitors suggested that many imaginative associations were being made.

The prints and drawings chosen to illustrate Goya’s earlier explorations of the subject of witches and old women and to provide connections with Album D include interesting studies of youth and age, the old witch teaching a younger acolyte to fly on a broomstick for example (Linda maestra! – ‘Pretty Teacher’, c.1797-98, London, British Museum). The old witch is finding erotically-charged new uses for the lowly broom, symbol of her poverty and drudgery, with which the young woman is not familiar. The image is equally a metaphor for the initiation of the prostitute, and the witch is conflated with the old bawd in other prints. Sexual innuendo permeates many of the images, and where the young women are assumed to be prostitutes, their old ‘celestina’ or procuress manages and markets them. The young woman’s body in this print exposes the fleshy proportions determined by tight corseting, while the old woman has the spare bony flanks, contracted muscles, sinewy arms and strong hands of manual labour. In fact, the physical strength of the old women throughout the exhibition is noticeable, sometimes evoking the body-type of working men which populate artists’ life drawings from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. In Hilan delgado, ‘They Spin Finely’ (c.1797-8, London, British Museum) three old women sit together like the Fates, their deformed, toothless faces defying sympathy. Yet the fingers of the witch spinning her yarn are accurate and skilled, her distaff gripped under her left arm.

Goya was masterful in his depiction of the body slumped, bending or in tension, and the uncorseted old women in this exhibition stand, sit or tell their rosaries as best they can, given their osteoarthritic backs and heavy burdens. They have none of the discreet grace of the younger women who actually appear rather limp and insipid by comparison. But when freed from gravity’s rules, they fly and dance effortlessly with mischievous joy, clutching and provoking male companions, defying the propriety expected of old age, seemingly impervious to any dangers resulting from falling. As Goya aged, he seems to have found more imaginative scope for portraying the reviled less conventionally. His drawings contrast with the obese or scrawny satirical caricature of the old by James Gillray and George Cruickshank. His figures may be menacing but they have agency and are drawn with attention to expression and often with empathy. His old women do not run races for the amusement of the rich (see Frances Burney’s Evelina).

Included in the main room, close to the Album D drawings is a fairly large etching (247 x 358 mm plate), Disparate Ridiculo, ‘Ridiculous Folly’, (c.1816-23, British Museum). A knotty tree branch forms a diagonal from the lower left across the print. If it included leaves or blossom, it would be a pleasing, closely observed study from nature. Instead, ten figures huddle together on the branch, one facing the others swathed in a blanket, his or her hand gestures indicating a disquisition of some sort. A few of the listeners pay attention, others stare enigmatically out at us. The catalogue informs us that ‘Some have been identified as witches and others as members of the nobility’ (cat.36). This, however, simply deepens the mystery. Were there well-known individual witches and why would they be associating with particular nobles? Or are we to assume that a set of features makes this identification feasible, given that the print does not include obvious differences? What was Goya’s purpose in making this print? A possible explanation for this bizarre composition is offered by the publisher of the first detailed catalogue raisonné of Goya’s work (Tomás Harris, Goya, Engravings and Lithographs, 2 vols. Oxford, 1964), in which the saying ‘To go amongst the branches’ meaning ‘to talk through one’s hat’ is mentioned. But a whole paper could be written about the implications of all these points. I will here indicate one further reference which is made on the wall label but not in the catalogue: The ‘enigmatic subject and the exotic drapery’ connect to the ‘magical world’ of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. It is thought that Goya and Tiepolo knew each other at the time that Tiepolo was working at the Spanish Court from 1761 to his death in 1770, and that they may have exchanged etchings. Tiepolo’s extravagant rococo fantasies may perhaps find echoes in this particular print by Goya, although their styles and purposes are hard to reconcile. Fortunately, visitors may go down one floor when leaving the exhibition to see a group of Tiepolo’s oil sketches for a Franciscan church in Spain made in 1767 (Sketches for San Pascual, Aranjuez, Courtauld Gallery) and to judge his style for themselves.

In the centre of the main room is a case showing samples of Goya’s experiments with lithography, made when he was in his seventies, and these are some of the most exciting exhibits on show. Though several earlier prints in the exhibition include technical imperfections, such as slight ink transfer from the plate edge or even a faint thumbprint (for example, on Subir y bajar, ‘To Rise and Fall’, c.1798-98, London, British Museum), the lithographs have a raw beauty in their very failure. Several are unique or from only a handful of impressions made. The mysterious and haunting The Monk (c.1819-22, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) is a study in chiaroscuro from an unevenly placed plate. The ink has contributed its own story to the background, a much deeper black than it appears in the catalogue. The same is true of the larger Inferno (c.1819-22, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de Espaňa). This is not complete, an unevenly printed early attempt at the craft by Goya, but its poor state and nebulous meaning make it modern, troubling and disconcerting. Chaotic figures pull a bound, half-naked figure across the paper, their manic faces only appearing fleetingly through the uncooperative partial inking.

The catalogue shows two lithographs in reverse order to the display in the case, Espresivo doble fuerza, ‘Expressive of Double Strength’ (c.1819-22, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de Espaňa), and The Violation (c.1819-22, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). This has the effect of telling a quite different story. Does the young woman have her clothes torn and suffer an attack following her too trusting embrace of the man, or does she reconcile herself to him following the attack? A ‘before and after’ pair of prints can thus be ambiguous, but this may have been intentional. The subject matter of the lithographs relates to the Black Paintings, dark disturbing images which Goya was painting on the walls of his house during the same period that he was working on his Witches album.

The rich offerings at the Courtauld offer evidence of Goya’s state of mind in the last years of his life. The last time we had the chance to see some of these drawings was in 2001 when the Hayward Gallery exhibited a broad selection. They were shown in cases which enabled close viewing but did not enable the wider view which can be had in the Courtauld, where patterns of movement and shape shared by the drawings can be appreciated. This exhibition can be enjoyed whether one is art-historically informed or not, since the drawings have an immediacy and interest in their subject matter which can stand alone and relate to us all. If it is just his observations of old age which remain with us, we will have gained some insight into a subject which is seldom explored in art galleries. A notable exception might be Rembrandt’s late portraits. Rarer still are exhibitions which specifically focus on old women, especially the poor and marginalised.

Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album was at The Courtauld Gallery, London from 26th February to 25th May 2015.