Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, in the year 1746, in Fuendetodos, a small village in northern Spain. At the age of fourteen he became an apprentice for a local artist, Jose Luz an. Later he traveled to Madrid where he took interest in the last of the great Venetian painters. After attempting and failing to enroll in the of San Fernando, Goya then traveled to Rome, Italy. Then on to Sago ssa in 1771 where he painted fresco in several local churches, establishing a reputation. In 1773 Goya married a women named Josefa Bayou, together they had many children, unfortunately only one by the name of Xavier made it to become an adult.
From 1775 to 1792 Goya paints cartoons for a royal tapestry factory, beginning his first genre paintings of everyday life. Later Goya achieves his first successful movement. He became a portrait painter for the Spanish aristocracy. He finally enrolled in the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, Francisco and was named painter to King Charles IV in 1786, and Court Painter in 1789. In 1792 he suffered from a serious illness which left him permanently deaf. This began to make him feel alienated and separated from everyone else, provoking him to paint the darkness and weakness of mankind.
He began to paint his own version of caricatures, showing the subjects as he saw them. In 1795 he was elected director of painting at the Royal Academy and served until 1797, then being appointed Spanish Court Painter in 1799. Goya soon after begins a time where his imagination goes wild, and he enters a world of surrealism, which at the time proved to be unexceptable. Being unable to present these paintings, he withdraws his works and continues his job. During Napoleons invasion and the Spanish war of Independence Goya became court painter for the French from 1808 to 1814. King Ferdinan VIII, king of Spain brings Goya back to Spain as Chamber Painter after the war.
Instead Goya chooses to express his hate towards war in, The Disasters, a series of paintings beginning a period known as The Black Paintings. These paintings included scenes of witchcraft, massacre, and other bizarre activities. After over a decade of watching King Ferdinan attempt to establish absolutism Goya leaves Spain and went into voluntary exile in France, settling in Bordeaux. Here he his wok continued until his death.