87. Cart with Oxen, from the Field [cca. 1890]

"Some tell me I'm poetic. I don't really know what that means. But I suspect what must be on their minds. That I'd attempt to make things more beautiful than nature. I choose, I do not correct. I do what pleases me, what corresponds to my soul. That I couldn't even do anything else. Only in war was I forced to leave the borders of my nature." the painter would declare. We will see that nature itself corresponded to his soul, with the vegetation, animals and people well planted in the landscape. The ox cart will inevitably become a necessary consequence of the artist's need for beauty and at the same time a conscious choice of the brilliance of the natural frame. As Alexandru Vlahuță remembers in the volume dedicated to the painter, the landscape appears, in Grigorescu's work, as "a wide open window in the light from outside". He chooses nature as a model and dedicates a large part of his creation to the ox carts. He will conduct, throughout his life, a consistent study of the bovine representative and will include the man's companion in work and suffering in many of his works. He studies the oxen with extraordinary patience and paints them with visible sympathy in his canvases. He paints endless picturesque rows, herds returning from the field, groups caught as they approach or at the time of their departure from the foreground. He is also concerned with the subtle integration of man and animal into nature. From the vitality in the foreground to the secondary plans that fade slightly, Grigorescu paints the modest peasant and rural life devoid of complex encryptions. He manages, like no one else, to create a special agreement between the shepherds of the flocks and the represented animals. He paints with complete freedom the silhouettes of peasants caught in daily pastoral life. He suggests their physiognomies briefly, either through a careful distribution of light, using strong accents, or relying on fine transitions in the shade. Grigorescu looks at rural life through the eyes of the peasant, and nature will become for the painter that "home" once he settles in Câmpina. The Muscel and Prahova regions will serve his continuous thirst to know and decipher the mystery of rural life. "His hand moves by itself and the piece of canvas turns into a charming confession of the detail of life that has risen in the painter's path," notes Alexandru Vlahuță. Struck down by pneumonia in 1907, he will be led to his final resting place just as he described the custom in his paintings - in an ox cart.

References

VLAHUȚĂ, Alexandru, "Painter Grigorescu - His Life and Work", Alexandru Vlahuță, Bucharest, 1910. Petrașcu, Nicolae, "N. Grigorescu", Typography "Bucovina", I.E. Toroutiu, Bucharest, 1930. Brezianu, Barbu, "Nicolae Grigorescu", Youth Publishing House, Bucharest, 1959. Jianu, I .; Vasiliu, G., "Dr. C.I. Istrati", Scientific Publishing, Bucharest, 1964. OPRESCU, George, "Nicolae Grigorescu", Meridians Publishing, Bucharest, 1963. CEBUC, Alexandru, "Grigorescu", Official Monitor, 2017.

Dimensions

width 25.5 cm, height 15 cm

Description

oil on wood, signed at the bottom right, in red, "Grigorescu"

Lot.notes

on the back, authenticated by Jean Al. Steriadi, "Cart with Oxen oil painting on wooden panel, authentic by N. Grigorescu"

Dating

cca. 1890

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