34. Family [1890-1900]

From front painting (which he deepened in volunteering undertaken in 1877), to portraits, landscapes or genre scenes; the artist will assume and perfect his style, succeeding in mastering it so well that he was later able to adopt the position of pedagogue, from which he taught his students drawing and calligraphy for over two decades. We will notice a discreet, careful transition, from church painting with Baroque emanations to easel painting. We therefore step from the realm of historical themes, towards landscape, myths and legends. In a later stage of creation, corresponding to the period 1895-1904, critics note the tendency towards so-called "miniaturisation", or the transition from oversized canvases to creations that span considerably smaller surfaces. Here we find portraits, but also numerous canvases dedicated to the animalier subject. Horses and oxen will especially appear (even from the cycle dedicated to fairs), integrated into the landscape, among inns, carts and people. The end of the 19th century brings to the fore works such as "Goats"(1892), "Plow with oxen at plowing" (1899), but we also find earlier works such as "Hunting", "Fish", "Cow" or "Dog". This time, the attentive study of rural life will result in the transposition of some felines into Henția's work. Intensely represented in universal art, cleverly slipped into the works of the great masters, making an individual path through works of undeniable value and occupying everything from the forefront of the work to the role of an adjunct in a secondary plan, the cat becomes a recurring motif in the creations of artists like Annibale Carracci, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet. The much-loved felines gain symbolic valences in Romanian art, often seen in Iser, Negreni or Catargi, but also in Grigorescu, who slipped among the intense study dedicated to bulls and a few cat sketches. Sava Henția is therefore concerned with outlining a radiography of rural life, in which yard creatures take turns one after the other.

References

POPA, Cristian Ioan, "In Search of Cinderella. The Landscape in the Work of Painter Sava Henția (1848-1904)", Terra Sebus.

Dimensions

width 31 cm, height 24 cm

Description

ulei pe carton, signed bottom left, in black, "S. Henția"

Dating

1890-1900

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