80. Little Peasant Girl Resting [1870-1880]

Based on the conception of the composition and the calligraphy of the signature fragment with letters leaning to the right, the work belongs to the 1870s from Nicolae Grigorescu's creation, probably after 1874. This is the period when, having returned from Italy, the Romanian artist is in search of national themes that he studies in various compositional situations. Some will be transformed into the emblem of his art, but also into that of a Romanian school of painting about to be born. These were the years on the eve of gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire, when Romanian society was preparing this historical upheaval, and the artistic world was in search of the artistic expression of national identity, a direction that will last in our art until towards the second world war. In the present image, the young peasant woman in holiday costume, with borangic ie and black fotă, with red coral necklace around her neck, which for Grigorescu represented a sublimation of the sense of beauty from folk art, is already found as a theme. The ideal of the silhouette lujer of the peasant woman, a personal aesthetic choice, so different in relation to the realism of the Barbizon School, is also already present here. We believe that in 1874, in Rome, in the Trinità dei Monti area, where fairs of models for artists were organized and in the workshop in Via Margutta, drawing and painting watercolors after models - peasant women from the Ciociara area, in colorful, picturesque costumes, Grigorescu found the trigger for the theme of the Romanian peasant woman dressed traditionally. In the present work, the composition is organized vertically. It is framed in a sumptuous French frame, surely the one initially chosen by Grigorescu, a type of presentation of his paintings, for which the artist opted in Paris. In the center is the full-figure character, seen sideways, sitting on a rock where vegetation has grown. The idea of the genre scene with the young, beautiful and delicate girl admiring her rich row of red beads around her neck, we do not know to have been subsequently resumed in a series of variants. A certain search for grace and elegance is present: the delicacy and fragility of the profile face, the fineness of the fingers and the silver bracelet, the thinness of the silhouette as well as the borangic transparencies of the ie or the silk of the headscarf. These are aspects that can indicate a model from the urban world or from the world of boyar mansions and not a peasant woman. The source of light in the studio is focusing on the female model, creating a strong contrast with the twilight and nocturnal ambiance around the rock. It is a lighting effect that appears in other works of the period (A flower among flowers, 1870, MNAR, inv.3343; Entering the bath, MMB – Pinacoteca, inv. 491; On thoughts, MMB-Pinacoteca, inv. 1365; On thoughts, Craiova Art Museum, inv. 667). We decipher below the character, the attributes of the Grigorescian peasant woman, a pot and a terracotta jug, props that also appear in paintings that can be considered emblematic, such as Rodica/Spring (Constanta Art Museum, inv. 1576), From the fountain (Artmark sale, December 20, 2016) and others. In the catalog of the solo exhibition opened by Grigorescu at the Athenaeum in May 1887 (no.39, price 1500 lei), the work Girl and beads, perhaps the present one, is featured. It is not excluded that the same painting was also presented in Paris a few months earlier, at the exhibition opened by the artist at the Louis Martinet Gallery on Boulevard des Italiens, at the end of 1886. The work is not reproduced in the classic bibliography dedicated to the artist. A previous restoration intervention and a re-canvas covered (or could not recover) part of the artist's signature. (IB)

References

"Catalog of the Grigorescu Exhibition May 11, 1887, Bucharest, Royal Court Typography F. Gobl Sons, 1887, p. 3, no. 39. Al. Vlahuță, The Painter N.I. Grigorescu. His life and work, Edition of the School Houses, Socec&Cie Graphic Workshops, Bucharest, 1910. Remus Niculescu, Nicolae Grigorescu Exhibition, catalog from, Art Museum of the RPR, 1957 (chapter 1896-1907). Costina Anghel, Mariana Vida, Repertoire of modern Romanian painting. The 19th century, vol. II, letters F-H, revised edition, National Art Museum of Romania Publishing House, Bucharest, 2022."

Dimensions

width 44 cm, height 65 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower left, in red, "Grigorescu"

Dating

1870-1880

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