357. Shepherd with His Flock [1896-1904]

If we divide the work of Grigorescu by chronological and stylistic criteria into three great sequences, we can say that this work is integrated in the third (last) one, perhaps dating back to the last ten years of the 19th century, if we do not take into account the white chapter. With his vision as a plein air painter, of the same age as the Impressionists and perhaps a colleague of some of them in the 1860s in Parisian studios, Grigorescu captures here a precise moment of summer light at noon, specific to the hilly, Subcarpathian area that he loved and where he established his home and studio. Throughout his career, the artist has continuously created landscapes belonging to the same pictorial family, with this one having a specific identity besides its Grigorescian specificity. The craftsmanship of the author can also be found in this ability to "change", to introduce new compositional data into very similar structures (a very careful look is necessary), to conceive a musical variation on the same theme, that of summer light on the hills. The artist’s refinement can thus be identified in the dimensional dialogues and in the compositional proportions of this painting. Grigorescu usually builds a framework of landscapes - and chooses the landscape is the same vein - imagining an asymmetric relationship between heaven and earth, most of the time privileging atmospheric air. If we examine the vertical perimeter of the sides of this painting, we notice on both the right and the left an equal division between heaven and earth. Grigorescu, who always avoids mechanical symmetries, disturbs here the equalities suggested by the two long horizontal triangles, partially superimposed, which give nuances and sensibilities to the mathematical relations between the clearly defined areas, namely heaven and earth; the horizontal flow of the clouds (painted with a palette knife) gives the sky a certain dynamics and expressiveness, while leaving the natural role of stability to the earth. Discreet protagonists of the landscape are both the two trees with their foliage, the human element, the shepherd, and the animal, the sheep spread on the first hill, in the form of white accents, painted quickly, masterfully, from the tip of the brush. The artist's palette is specific to its chromatic options, the colours of nature, the blue and the white of the sky, the light, luminous green of vegetation and, here and there, the warmer, pink and earthy shades. By building the work as a plot, expressive touches are laid calmly, horizontally, in harmony with the sensitivity and the eye of the artist. Only the vertical lines of the trees and the subtle figure of the standing shepherd break the dominant horizontality of the painting’s fabric. This painting belonged to Dr. Alexandru Obreja/Obregia (1860-1937), the leading figure of the Romanian psychiatric school, founder of the specialised hospital in Bucharest in 1923, university professor. A friend of Grigorescu, he was his attending physician towards the end of his life. He had a lot of the artist’s works, as attested by the ten paintings reproduced in the 1909 Minerva Calendar (among which the current painting, entitled “On the Coast”), as well as two others reproduced in the monograph signed by Vlahuţă (1910).1 About a painting that Grigorescu had given to him in the early 1907, Dr. Obreja wrote to the painter on 6 January, the same year: “The minute I took the painting out of its box, my heart lit up with content. In the middle of the frozen winter you sent me, dear master, the true spring, since the painting is delightful […]. So much charm in this light […].”2 (IB) 1. At the Fountain, Vlahuţă 1910, p. 53 and Poor Man’s House, Vlahuţă 1910, p. 213 2. Letters from Dr. Obregia, in. G. Oprescu, "Corespondența lui N.Grigorescu", in Analecta, 2, 1944, p. 96.

References

Calendarul Minervei 1909
Remus Niculescu, Expoziția Nicolae Grigorescu, catalog de , MARPR, București, 1957
G.Oprescu, "Corespondența lui N.Grigorescu", in Analecta, 2, 1944, p. 10-98
G.Oprescu [- R.Niculescu], N. Grigorescu, vol. 2, Ed.Meridiane, București, 1962
A.Vlahuţă, Pictorul N.I. Grigorescu, Vieața și opera lui, cu 20 planșe fotogravură, Ediția Casei Școalelor, Atelierele grafice SOCEC & C0, București, 1910

Dimensions

width 46 cm, height 29 cm, custom 46x29

Description

oil on wood, signed lower right, in red, "Grigorescu"

Research information

Opera este reprodusă în Calendarul Minervei, 1909, la pag. 137.

Dating

1896-1904

PROVENANCE

The work was included in the collection of Dr. Alexandru Obregia, psychiatrist and university professor. Obregia's career is linked to the development of psychiatry, as he was in charge of building the first Neuropsychiatry Hospital in Romania, in Bucharest in 1923. Dr. Obregia was not just a collector of Grigorescu's paintings, but also his personal doctor, in the painter's later years, as proven by the correspondence between the two (George Oprescu, "Corespondența lui N. Grigorescu", Universul, 1944)

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