Fight with Cudgels

Fight with Cudgels is an oil-on-canvas painting created by Francisco Goya between 1820 and 1823 as part of his Black Paintings series. It was originally painted directly onto the walls of his rural house, the Quinta del Sordo, near Madrid, around 1819–1823. The work was later transferred to canvas in 1874 by restorer Salvador Martínez Cubells, commissioned by French banker Émile d'Erlanger, who intended to sell it at the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition.

When it failed to attract buyers, d'Erlanger donated the painting to the Museo del Prado in 1881, where it remains on display. The painting depicts two men engaged in a brutal stick fight, interpreted as a symbolic representation of conflict, possibly reflecting contemporary Spanish political tensions between liberals and absolutists.

Fight with Cudgels is held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Its inventory number is not specified in the sources, but the painting is recorded as accessioned within the museum's collection. The work was originally created by Francisco Goya between 1819 and 1823 as part of the Black Paintings series on the walls of his Quinta del Sordo.

It was later transferred to canvas in 1874 by Salvador Martínez Cubells, photographed by Jean Laurent, and acquired by the Museo del Prado in 1881 after being donated by the baron Émile d'Erlanger. The painting has been exhibited in various contexts, including the 1878 Universal Exposition in Paris, though it did not find a buyer and was subsequently donated to the Prado.

Fight with Cudgels belongs to Goya’s Black Paintings, a group executed directly on the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo, between 1819 and 1823. The painting’s placement on the upper floor aligned with Las Parcas, sharing the wall with a window, situating it within a program of confrontational imagery.

Scholarly debate has centered on the figures’ posture. Nineteenth-century readings described the men as knee-deep in mud, a view reinforced by the losses sustained during the 1874 transfer from plaster to canvas by Salvador Martínez Cubells. Photographic records by Jean Laurent, examined by Nigel Glendinning and Carlos Foradada, indicate the original ground was high grass; the later damage obscured the legs and skewed interpretation toward entrapment.

Interpretations also invoke Saavedra Fajardo’s emblem of sown men from Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth, read as a commentary on Ferdinand VII’s fomenting of discord to consolidate power.

The work has been positioned as a premonition of Spain’s recurrent conflicts. Both Spanish and foreign critics have framed it as fratricidal strife, liberals versus absolutists during the Trienio Liberal, rather than a folkloric scene. Its composition, with figures isolated against a desolate landscape and a skewed, Romantic structure, rejects neoclassical balance and aligns with the expressive aims of the Black Paintings.

“Fight with Cudgels,” an oil painting by Francisco Goya, belongs to the group of works known as the Black Paintings. Executed directly on the wall of Goya’s own residence, the piece portrays two figures locked in a violent struggle with long wooden clubs, their bodies seemingly sunk in a dark, muddy ground beneath a bleak sky.