A european walk through Bordeaux 16. The Death of Goya.

$Description : Description : Description : E:\www.bertrandfavreau.net\promenadeurop_fichiers\cabarrus.jpg$ A European walk through Bordeaux 16.

The Death of Goya.

57, Cours de l'Intendance.

On the third floor of this building, formerly number 39 Fossés [Ditches] de l’Intendance, on the night of 15 to 16 April 1828 at two o’clock in the morning, Francisco Goya y Lucientes died, aged 82.

In 1824, Goya, still Pintor de Cámara [painter to the court of Spain], had given a false pretext in order to leave Spain, saying he had to take the waters in Plombières, a very popular French spa town in the 19th century. Goya was probably not persecuted himself by the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII, because he was pensioned by the court and had no difficulty making several trips to Spain between 1824 and 1827. However, it is quite clear that his last companion, Leocadia Zorilla Weiss, who lived with him in Quinta del Sordo and who made no secret of her liberal ideas, was in peril. Her son, Guillermo, had been a militiaman during the liberal period.

Goya lived at several addresses in Bordeaux between 1824 and 1828, most of which no longer exist. When he arrived in Bordeaux on 27 June 1824, aged 78, he did not speak a word of French. He was put up by his friend, Manuel Silvela, a former alcalde of the court of King Joseph, who lived in the Hôtel du maréchal de Richelieu at 37 Rue Porte-Dijeaux (now Hôtel de la Préfecture). He met up with friends there, including the famous poet Leandro Fernández de Moratín. This first visit to Bordeaux lasted only three days. On the 30th, he left for Paris where he remained until early September.

When he returned to Bordeaux, he moved to the Hôtel des Quatre parties du monde, at the corner of Rue Esprit des Lois and Rue de Condé. It is here that, on 16 September, his companion Leocadia Weiss, who was 42 years younger than him, joined him with her two children, Guillermo and the young Maria del Rosario, whom Goya said he regarded as his own daughter – and which according to some experts was actually true (Goya had lived with Leocadia since 1813). The entire family settled in the hotel of Mr Berard, at 24 Cours de Tourny (28 Cours Georges Clemenceau) between 1824 and 1825. We know that he then lived at several addresses; he rented a house at 13 Rue Saint-Seurin (about which we know nothing), then a shop with a garden at 10 Rue de la Croix-Blanche, in what is now the Saint-Seurin neighbourhood (at what is today number 24), “where he was very happy.”… …

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