Perhaps they are of another breed, plate 61 from The Disasters of War
1812/15, published 1863
Medium
Etching, lavis, drypoint, burin and burnishing on ivory wove paper with gilt edges
Dimensions
Image: 13.3 × 18.5 cm (5 1/4 × 7 5/16 in.); Plate: 15.4 × 20.5 cm (6 1/8 × 8 1/8 in.); Sheet: 24 × 33.9 cm (9 1/2 × 13 3/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124914
Art Historical Context
Francisco Goya y Lucientes, a pioneering Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, created *Perhaps they are of another breed* (plate 61) as part of his seminal series *The Disasters of War* between 1812 and 1815. This etching captures the raw horrors of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), when Napoleon's invading French forces devastated Spain. Goya, witnessing the atrocities firsthand, produced 82 prints that unflinchingly document war's brutality, blending Romanticism's emotional intensity with stark realism. Not published until 1863—decades after his death due to political sens...
About the Artist
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in the small Aragonese village of Fuendetodos, Spain, to José Benito de Goya, a master gilder, and Gracia de Lucientes. The fourth of six children in a modest lower-middle-class family, Goya received a basic education before beginning his artistic training at age 14 under the local painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, where he sp...