59. Hut (In the Forest on the Plateau) [cca. 1895]

Nicolae Grigorescu

1838, Pitaru, Dâmboviţa - 1907, Câmpina

Estimate

EUR 25.000 - 45.000

Sold

EUR 28.000

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Session

Thu, 21 March 2024 19:00

Woven from alert brushstrokes, strewn in the top layer from the tip of the brush, as if "thrown", the pictorial material of this work has the characteristics of the modernity of plein air painting, including those of Grigorescu's art in the phase of maturity. If the landscape was painted in Romania, the motive on which Grigorescu stops (wandering the sub-Carpathian area), this "hut" - in fact a sketch of minimum human intervention in the natural landscape - would have reminded him of what he had encountered in the Barbizon area: discreet shelters improvised from branches, boards, by some artists who preferred to study in the ambiance of the Fontainebleau forest the moving nuances of the effects of light and darkness throughout the hours; here they could also deposit their landscape painting materials for the following days and rest. The Italian artist Giuseppe Palizzi, a known figure of the Barbizon-Marlotte group, had built a small cabin in the Fontainebleau forest around 1870 (he had obtained authorization), which he called La Gobba, meaning mound or hump, and which he saw as a simple accident of terrain, "a hump in the middle of the weeds." Unlike other Grigorescu landscapes, within the economy of the composition, the part of materiality (hill - earth, vegetation) covers almost the entire surface of the canvas, leaving the sky a small corner, top right. This makes us assume that the painter could have created this image sitting on the ground, on a sloping ground, having a perspective in shortcut of the small shelter and the hill on which it was located. Grigorescu was not a painter of architecture, or more precisely he didn't paint grand architectures. He chose to introduce in his work modest rural motifs, specific to the country towards the end of the 19th century. Even though he painted medieval stone houses from French boroughs or country houses with porch, the hut isolated in the untouched landscape seems to be, both through the singularity of the constructive idea and through the presence of untouched nature by human intervention, in accordance with the artist's sensitivity. The work can be placed in the group of landscapes with huts, variations on the same theme, which we find in Grigorescu's work from the 1870s to around 1895. In the collection of the National Art Museum of Romania (National Gallery) where several paintings with a similar motive are kept, we note the one closest to our piece, perhaps even painted in the same place (after the image of the hut) and at the same floral moment, the canvas" Hut in the forest", inv. 3338 (38.5 x 64, [1895], see, Grigorescu painter of nature, 2007, cat. 129).

References

Costina Anghel, Mariana Vida, The Repertoire of Modern Romanian Painting, 19th Century, vol.II, Letters F-H, Revised Edition, MNAR, 2022. Marion Lagrange, Italian Painters in Search of Identity. Paris 1855-1909, INHA, Paris, 2010. Remus Niculescu, Nicolae Grigorescu Exhibition, catalogue by, Art Museum of the RPR, Bucharest, 1957. G. Oprescu, Grigorescu and France. A Study on the Spiritual and Artistic Formation of the Painter, Official Gazette and State Print House, Bucharest, 1946. Mariana Vida, Monica Enache, Rodica Matei, Grigorescu, Painter of Nature (1838-1907)/Grigorescu, Painter of Nature,[ exhibition catalogue ], MNAR, Bucharest, 2007. A.Vlahuță, Painter N.I.Grigorescu.His Life and Work, Schools House Edition, Bucharest, 1910.

Dimensions

width 40.5 cm, height 26 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower left, in red, "Grigorescu"

Dating

cca. 1895

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