Janis A. Tomlinson has written and lectured extensively on the art of Goya. Her books include Goya: Order and Disorder, Goya: Images of Women, Goya in the Twilight of Enlightenment, and Francisco Goya: The Tapestry Cartoons and Early Career at the Court of Madrid.
Tomlinson's meticulous distillation of a voluminous number of parish records, drawings, notes, and letters is impressive, and her knowledge of and passion for Goya continually shine through in her writing, making for a fascinating and insightful reading experience. A top-notch biography. * Kirkus starred review * A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Art, Architecture, & Photography Book of Fall 2020 Goya: A Portrait of the Artist [is] a newly informed chance to reflect on an artist of enigmatic mind and permanent significance. . . . Tomlinson addresses, with refreshing clarity, a chronic question of just how independent, not to say subversive, Goya was of the powers that employed him. . . . She admirably keeps the mysteries of Goya's character distinct from its self-serving machinations. ---Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker In Goya: A Portrait of the Artist, [Janis Tomlinson shows that] the painter was not the loner that he is sometimes imagined to be. . . . One of the pleasures of Tomlinson's book lies in encountering the unvarnished details of Goya's life; her delineation of the artist's remarkably flexible political allegiances is especially engrossing. ---Andrew Martin, Harper's Magazine In this biography of the last of Spain's old masters, Tomlinson views Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) within the context of his age and challenges the conventional interpretation of his late years as a period of disillusion. * Publishers Weekly *