oil on canvas, 90.5 x 72 cm

Research information

The work is reproduced and listed in the monograph by Vera Horvat Pintarić, "Miroslav Kraljević", Globus, Zagreb, 1985, p. 140, cat. no. 13. under the title "Portrait of Franjo Dujmović", inventoried on p. 309. The work is listed in the catalog of the exhibition "Josip Račić – Miroslav Kraljević: Memorial Exhibition 1885 – 1985", Modern Gallery, Zagreb, 1985, cat. no. 73. under the title "Portrait of Franjo Dujmović", p.46. The work is accompanied by an expert opinion from Prof. Dr. Zvonko Maković.

PROVENANCE

Historical collection of Dr. Franjo Dujmović, collection of successors until 2026.

This representative portrait of Dr. Dujmović, a relative of the painter Miroslav Kraljević, is not unknown to the cultural public and admirers of Kraljević's work. The public's attention was first drawn to this first-class painter's portrait work in the monograph of Dr. Sc. Vera Horvat Pintarić (1985.) who reproduced it in color on page 140 and included it as an authentic painter's work in the catalog raisonné of Kraljević's small, but very important opus for the history and summarizing of the universal painting values of Croatian modern art. The portrait was created after the painter's return from Paris to his homeland, precisely first to Požega and then to Zagreb, where the Kraljević family had a house at Medulićeva street No. 3 and where the painter in his studio during November and half of December 1912. managed to finish the portrait of Dr. Dujmović and start the portrait of rector Pliverić, which he unfortunately did not manage to finish. Namely, on the eve of Christmas 1912., Kraljević fell ill with a severe pneumonia which was fatal for his tuberculosis-weakened body. Broad brush strokes and a realistically painted seated figure of Dr. Dujmović, dressed in an elegant suit with gray reflections, and the drapery that covers the background wall, painted in small gradations of ochre and in the manner of Dufy tapestries, vividly show that Kraljević in Munich perfected tonal modeling and that in the old Pinacotheque he loved the silvery shine of Diego Velázquez's palette, and that he in Paris just touched upon, actually referred to Cézanne's heritage and turned to the aesthetics of direct (immediate) visual expression. About the gentleman portrayed from this Kraljević's painting it should be said that it is the doctor Franjo Dujmović who married the painter's aunt Olga r. Vukelić, the sister of the painter's mother Juliana Kraljević r. Vukelić. The Kraljević family often stayed at the Dujmovićs when they came to Zagreb until the Kraljevićs bought a house on Medulićeva street. Finally, in that house, the painter died on April 16, 2013 after unsuccessful treatment at the sanatorium on Brestovec (Sljeme). Miroslav Kraljević, in the complex invocations of changes at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, goes into the ranks of modernists of a special kind who transcended national borders. Within national borders, due to the impulse he gave for a new direction in Croatian painting, the supreme significance of Kraljević's opus does not fade even today. During the explosively artistic Paris year (1911/1912.) of the young, twenty-six year old painter, an epochal involution of feeling occurred. A new state of mind with new substantive and formal potential and even the Paris art scene of the first decade of the 20th century provided him with an inexhaustible source of motifs and revealed to him the charms of a limitless life. Kraljević, venturing from his native Požega through Vienna and Munich to arrive in Paris, experienced the charms of flâneur and adopted the values of pure painting. By painting the world of the modern metropolis and his existence in it, as well as the dear plains and people of the Požega region, he laid the foundations for synchronous development with the matrix of European visual achievements for Croatian modern art. With Kraljević's portraits and self-portraits, Croatian modern painting and the identity of its champion are highly integrated into the cosmopolitan production of modern Europe. The painting of Miroslav Kraljević, born in Croatia but matured in France, besides reflecting the painter's modern spirit and high artistic reaches, also celebrates the cosmopolitan nature of the art scene before the Great War and affirms the values of the European cultural circle shared and often synchronously built by Croatian artists.

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