82. Ox Cart Caravan, at Dusk [1903]

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82. Ox Cart Caravan, at Dusk [1903]

Nicolae Grigorescu

1838, Pitaru, Dâmboviţa - 1907, Câmpina

Estimate:

EUR 40.000 - 60.000

Sold

EUR 65.000

References

VLAHUȚĂ, Alexandru, "Pictorul Grigorescu - Viața și opera lui" ("The painter Grigorescu - His life and works"), Alexandru Vlahuță, Bucharest, 1910. OPRESCU, George, "Nicolae Grigorescu", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1963. CEBUC, Alexandru, "Grigorescu", Monitorul Oficial, 2017.

oil on wood, 28 x 42 cm, 28 Ã 42 cm, signed and dated bottom left, in red, "Grigorescu, (1)903"

The name of Nicolae Grigorescu is closely connected to the opening of Romanian painting towards modernity. Life itself represented the starting point for his creation, and consequently he persistently searched for a pictorial language intended to render the beauty of Romanian lands as accurately as possible. During his stay in Paris, he found out from his school colleagues about the existence of the Barbizon group of artists. He joined the movement on his journey towards a much more realistic painting and worked together with some of the most important names in French art: Rousseau, Courbet, Millet, Monet, or Renoir. At Barbizon, he found inspiration in the life of French peasants, transposing on canvas landscapes and human characters specific for the geographical realm in which he worked. This is where Grigorescu acquired a particular attitude towards life and the purpose of art, allowing the pictorial manner to converge to the background. During his studies in France, his preference for landscape was deeply enforced. Throughout his entire artistic career, he actively sought captivating views and frescos, and he recorded the beauty of his native lands with unrivalled mastery. Just like Alexandru Vlahuță reminded in his book dedicated to the painter, the landscape in Grigorescu's work appears as "a window wide open towards the outside light". With an unusual reflexiveness, our artist meditated on the peasant's condition, achieving an actual panoramic view of the Romanian village. He chose nature as a model, devoting an ample part of his creation to ox carts. Throughout his life, he completed a consistent study of the bovine representative, including the peasant's working and suffering companion in many of his works. He researched oxen with extraordinary patience, and he depicted them with an obvious affection on his canvases. He painted endless rows of elements, flocks of sheep returning from the field, groups captured while approaching or distancing themselves from the foreground. He was also concerned with the subtle integration of the human being and the animal in nature. From the vitality of the foreground to the slowly fading backgrounds, Grigorescu painted the modest peasant and village life, lacking complex encodings. He succeeded like no one else in creating a particular correspondence between shepherds and the represented animals. He illustrated with complete freedom the figures of the peasants, captured in everyday pastoral life. Their physiognomies are vaguely suggested, by means a careful distribution of the light, or by using strong accents, or by counting on delicate transitions into shadow. After his death from pneumonia in 1907, he was led to the place of eternal rest according to the custom he had described in his paintings - in an ox cart. (D.C.)

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