132. Landscape in Doftana Valley

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132. Landscape in Doftana Valley

Nicolae Grigorescu

1838, Pitaru, Dâmboviţa - 1907, Câmpina

Estimate:

EUR 20.000 - 35.000

Sold

EUR 24.000

References

BREZIANU, Barbu, "Nicolae Grigorescu", Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1987
ENACHE, Monica (şi alţii), "Grigorescu – pictor al naturii, (catalog)", MNAR, 2008
VLAHUŢĂ, Alexandru, "Pictorul Nicolae Grigorescu. Viaţa şi opera lui", Ed. Casa Şcoalelor, Bucureşti, 1910

oil on wood, 34 x 55.5 cm, 55,5x34, signed lower right, in red, "Grigorescu"

Nicolae Grigorescu’s work around 1900 still gives rise to disputes concerning the true source of the modelled imagery – and this is not a reference to inspiration, but to the conscious action of interpreting nature in a certain manner, with a certain technique and approach. Whether Grigorescu is anchored to contemporary movements and we must highlight the precedence of Art-Nouveau in 1900, or his eyesight was the cause of his “white period”, the answer is most likely somewhere in between. However, the reasoning of this biographic ambiguity is plausible: the excessive use of white was caused by poor eyesight, yet white is also a feature of Art-Nouveau decorativism. At the same time, the discussion cannot omit the pictorial effects individualised during this period, both for characters and landscapes. The spindly bodies of the female shepherds or the rippled, curved horizons are elements of a language that may explain the correlation between Grigorescu’s art and the most famous movement of the 1900s. The primary quality of the work developed during the last 10 years of creation is related to vision, an unmistakable vision translated through the direct contact with immediate reality, filtered (or not) through the ever passionate lyrical sensitivity. The landscape has been genuinely won when Nicolae Grigorescu managed to connect the style to that vision, via his own opinion of Impressionism, the value of things and coordinating aesthetics. The gains of this last period, especially in the pictorial manner, have accounted for the value provided to the entire composition, by the artist’s capacity to paint both the whole and the fractions, with the same meaningfulness and quality of the candescent universe. In addition, Grigorescu managed to borrow from character painting the typical idealisation that did not allow him to express anything other than the beautiful and optimistic, thus, his landscapes fall within the coordinates of a truly masterful sensorial topography. The hills, valleys, clearings, glades and meadows crossed by shepherds all fall within the Grigorescu imagery and are partly transformed into aesthetic excellence, each inaugurating eloquent cycles. The highly stylised “Landscape in Doftana Valley” immerses us into the creation of the recent years, unravelling before the eyes of the beholder as a piece of unspoiled, first-hand impression, sensorial and painted instinctively. Grigorescu uses wider brushes to lay the colour on generous surfaces of the wooden panel, managing to essentialise shape, which, aside from the tree, is dissolved into chromatic volumes. (I.P.)

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