Fire at Night

Between 1793–1794 Francisco Goya was on a convalescence. He then completed a set of eleven small pictures painted on tin. Known as Fantasy and Invention, they mark a significant change in the tone and subject matter of his art. They draw from dark and dramatic realms of fantasy nightmare. Goya wrote that these works served "to occupy my imagination, tormented as it is by contemplation of my sufferings." The series, he said, consisted of pictures which "normally find no place in commissioned works." Fire at Night is an evidence that Goya's world was no longer as cheerful and bright as the one he had been required to portray in his Rococo-like tapestry cartoons. And the Peninsular war which made Goya to create the The Disasters of War was still about to arrive.