67. Return from the Market [1896-1901]

The artist advocates for the honesty of feeling and militates for the representation of the native landscapes in a profoundly purified, pictorial, and synthesized manner through the charm of art. From the French landscapes studied at Barbizon to the shepherd of the Romanian village, the subject is prominent and recurring in the paintings of Nicolae Grigorescu. The countless summers spent in the middle of nature, in valleys and through mountains, endowed the artist with the Romanian ethos that was to dominate his entire work. Antiquities exhibitions introduced Nicolae Grigorescu to the patrons of his era, and thus his works ended up in reputed collections like Queen Elizabeth's, Alexandru Vlahuță's, Iosif Dona's, or Constantin Istrati's. During his studies in France, his preference for landscape is deeply emphasized. He actively sought captivating panoramas and frescoes throughout his artistic career and immortalized the beauty of his native places with unparalleled virtuosity. As Alexandru Vlahuță reminds us in the book dedicated to the painter, the landscape appears in Grigorescu's work as "a wide-open window to the outside light." With a non-standard reflexivity, our artist will meditate on the condition of the village man and will create a genuine panorama of the Romanian rural space. He chooses nature as a model and dedicates a large part of his creation to oxen's carts. Throughout his life, he consistently studied the representative of the bovine family and included the companion of work and suffering of the village man in many of his works. He studies bulls with extraordinary patience and paints them with evident sympathy on his canvases. He paints endless picturesque rows, herds returned from the field, groups surprised as they approach or when they move away from the foreground. He is also interested in subtly integrating humans and animals into nature. From the vitality in the foreground to the second plans that fade away, Grigorescu paints the modest peasant and rural life devoid of complex encodings. Like no one else, he manages to create a special agreement between the shepherds, the herds and the represented animals. He paints the shapes of peasants caught in the postures of everyday pastoral life with utter freedom. He suggests their physiognomies summarily, either by a careful distribution of light, strong accents, or relying on fine transitions into shadow.

References

OPRESCU, George, "Nicolae Grigorescu", Meridiane Publishing, Bucharest, 1963. CEBUC, Alexandru, "Grigorescu", Official Gazette, 2017. VLAHUȚĂ, Alexandru, "The Painter Grigorescu - His Life and Work", Alexandru Vlahuţă, Bucharest, 1910.

Dimensions

width 33 cm, height 22 cm

Description

ulei pe lemn, signed bottom left, in red, "Grigorescu"

Dating

1896-1901

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