About

Janis A. Tomlinson is an internationally recognized authority on the Spanish artist Francisco Goya y Lucientes and his era and author of Goya: A Portrait of the Artist (Princeton University Press, 2020). In December 2020 she was awarded the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica for her contribution to knowledge of the culture and history of Spain.

Her books on Goya and painting in Spain have been translated into six languages. They include Graphic Evolutions: The Print Series of Francisco Goya and Francisco Goya: The Tapestry Cartoons and Early Career at the Court of Madrid – the inspiration for a reinstallation of those paintings at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Goya in the Twilight of Enlightenment, published three years later, offered a reappraisal of the artist’s mid-career within the political and social context of his era. A more general study of Goya and another of painting in Spain followed before Tomlinson served as co-curator with the late Francisco Calvo Serraller of an exhibition of Goya’s imagery of women, a joint project of the Museo del Prado, Madrid and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She was lead author of the exhibition catalogue, Goya: Order and Disorder (2014).

Her lectures, in English and Spanish, have taken her to universities and museums in the U.S, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and Argentina. She has been an invited speaker at international symposia at the Universidad de Zaragoza (keynote); the 24th Historical Clinicopathological Conference at The University of Maryland School of Medicine; The National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute London; the Museo del Prado, Madrid; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. She was appointed a member of the advisory committee of the Fundación Goya in Aragón in 2019.

Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson International Fellowship as well as grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has twice won the Eleanor Tufts Award (given for a distinguished publication in English on a topic pertaining to the art and architecture of Spain and Portugal by the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies).

Beyond writing and sharing her passion for Goya, her interests include yoga and meditation, discovering new museums or re-discovering old ones, animal welfare, walks -- usually with her faithful canine companions, Bella and Rocky – and, of course, reading.

Featured Work

Goya: A Portrait of the Artist

2020

This biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) situates the artist and his work within the social and political transitions that defined Spain during his era. It is the story of a multi-faceted creator, successful and highly respected by his contemporaries, who confronted personal challenges including childhood poverty, the early deaths of six of his seven children, and the onset of deafness at the age of 47. Having grown up within a community of artists in Zaragoza, the capital of Aragón, he arrived at the court of Madrid in 1775, where he remained in service for the next 50 years. From this vantage point, he witnessed the decline of Spain’s economy, its devastation by the Napoleonic war, the instability of a restoration monarchy, a liberal coup in 1820 and a three-year period of constitutional government, and, with the ensuing restoration, a reinvigorated conservatism and ruthless persecution of liberals.
Goya served four successive regimes, ultimately to settle in Bordeaux with the full salary and title of first court painter. From the early 1790s on, as he fulfilled commissions for portraits, religious paintings, and genre scenes, he also scrutinized the changing society revealed in drawings, paintings, and etchings. How can we understand his enduring and undiminished creativity? Four aspects of his life and personality serve as underlying themes for this narrative of Goya’s life. Foremost is his unswerving faith in his own genius and capacity for creation (in his word, his invención), the fluidity of which was uniquely attuned to the shifting contexts of his day. That invención might never have been realized were it not for his unrelenting drive. Also considered are his sociability and skill in navigating court intrigues, as well as the relationships with friends and family that sustained him throughout his life.
 

Other Works

Awards and Recognition

  • American Association of Publishers 2021 Prose Award (Biography and Autobiography)
  • In December 2020, Tomlinson was awarded the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica for her contribution to knowledge of the culture and history of Spain.

Press and Media Mentions