Experts call them Goya’s “Black Paintings.” Francisco de Goya painted them in his last days, and he painted the pictures on a wall, though they are now in the Prado. Some people find the images terrifying and difficult to look at.
I love one of them.
Goya didn’t title these paintings and didn’t call them his “Black Paintings.” Experts caution that people tend to see things in Goya that might or might not be there. People call the painting I love “The Drowning Dog” because many people see a dog and they also see that the dog is caught in an enormous wave.
I see the dog but not the wave.
I’m a country boy, used to looking at landscape, emphasis on land. Even on the plains of West Texas, land rises and falls, breaks and folds. The Earth is filled with ridges. I’ve seen coyotes suddenly appear as if they emerged from of the earth and then noticed that they were coming over a barely perceptible ridge, maybe 6 inches high.
Instead of seeing a doomed dog caught in an enormous wave, which seems unlikely, I see an ordinary dog doing what canines do — they pop up in ways that humans find hard to understand.
Many native people who were here before the Europeans said that when it is time for a human being to die, the human doesn’t need to worry. A canine will pop up and show the human’s spirit where to go.
I’ve looked and looked at copies of Goya’s famous painting. I just don’t have it in me to see what so many others see — something so forbidding, so fearful.
• Sources: For an explanation of the Black Paintings and an illustration of “The Drowning Dog” see Stephen Phelan, “Goya’s Black Paintings: ‘Some people can hardly even look at them’; The Guardian, Jan. 30, 2019. Jung mentions the image in Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols; New York: Anchor Press, 1988.
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