43. In the Library [1874.]

Nikola Mašić, a renowned painter of genre scenes in the landscape, during his creative lifetime was an esteemed and highly respected artist, and in the decades afterwards almost forgotten until the extensive critical retrospective exhibition of his work organized in 2017 in the Modern Gallery under the title "Nikola Mašić - Noble Realist". Indeed, he is an artist of noble endeavors and supreme results, one of the greatest landscape and portrait painters of Croatian modern art who painted the world around him, nature and people as he saw and experienced them, modernly and realistically, honestly and responsibly towards the artistic mission and style he chose. In the painting "In the Library", signed in 1874, a young lady is depicted sitting in an armchair reading some interesting literature in a room with an open cupboard full of books and with a plaster bust of some Greek hero on a stand covered with velvet cloth. The arrangement and the repertoire of objects surrounding the nicely dressed lady are exactly according to the standard of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where Mašić was studying painting at that time. More precisely, from 1872 to 1875 when he had to interrupt his studies due to acute lung disease. He continued his studies after recovery and graduated cum laude in 1879. It is worth mentioning that Nikola Mašić is also the recipient of two prestigious Awards of the Munich Academy and a multi-year user of its studios in which he has achieved a large part of the oeuvre with which he has soared to the top of the painting production of that time. BRP

Dimensions

width 36 cm, height 42.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left, in red, "Nik. Mašić (18)74"

Dating

1874.

PROVENANCE

historical collection of Croatian industrialist, philanthropist, and diplomat Aleksandar Ehrmann (1879-1965)

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