The Knifegrinder

Goya painted this knife-grinder somewhere between 1808 and 1812, the years Spain was tearing itself apart. Napoleon's armies had marched in, put his brother on the Spanish throne, and the country answered with a brutal guerrilla war. These were the same years Goya was filling private sheets with the horrors of that fighting. Here, though, is simply a working man sharpening a blade on his wheel, sleeves pushed up, looking off to the side with a fierce, watchful stare. There are no soldiers and nothing political stated outright. But painting an ordinary labourer this large and this seriously, with that hard glare, carried a charge when much of the country had taken up arms. It hangs now in Budapest, paired with a woman carrying water, two plain people caught in an unquiet time.