A Bad Night, Plate 36 (1799): Art, History and Details

A Bad Night, Plate 36 (1799) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746–1828).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A Bad Night is from Los Caprichos (Caprices), a set of 80 prints that satirize the vices and follies of contemporary Spanish society. Goya explored the themes of superstition and sensuality, greed and violence, and immorality and deceit practiced by men and women who appear alternately as aggressors and victims. He parodied ignorance and stupidity as well as the corruption of the church and government. Goya exploited aquatint to create a dramatic contrast of light and shade through the biting and burnishing of richly textured or velvet-smooth aquatint grains. He thus expressed the opposing forces of enlightenment and ignorance, reason and the irrational world, and suggested an atmosphere of violence and doom, best illustrated in the trial proofs like this one, printed before the first edition.

Object facts

• Title: A Bad Night, Plate 36
• Date: 1799
• Creator attribution: Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746–1828)
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and aquatint
• Dimensions: Image: 18.9 x 13.2 cm (7 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.); Platemark: 21.4 x 15.1 cm (8 7/16 x 5 15/16 in.); Sheet: 26.3 x 20 cm (10 3/8 x 7 7/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1997.54

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Museum Acquires Major Chuck Close Painting, 19th-century Fire Screen, Rare Prints & Drawings,” June 9, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.