Duel au gourdin

Goya was in his mid-seventies, deaf, and recovering from an illness that had nearly killed him when he painted this straight onto the plaster wall of his house outside Madrid, sometime around 1820. It was never meant to be sold or even seen. Two men stand in an empty landscape beating each other with heavy clubs, and neither can leave. When a visitor saw it on the wall decades later, the two figures were standing in tall grass. By the time it was cut from the plaster and moved to canvas they seem sunk to the knees in mud, unable to step back even if they wanted to. Goya lived through a French invasion and a brutal civil war in Spain, and he put none of the usual flags or causes here. Just two men, alone, hitting each other.