37. House by the Water [1922.]

We can rightfully say that the painting of Split artist Emanuel Vidović (1870 - 1953) defined the period of modernism in Croatia and significantly contributed and enriched our landscape painting. During his long and prolific career, Vidović evolved from the post-Impressionist and divisionist influences of Giovanni Segantini to the lyrically-intimate approaches to the landscape motif, creating some of the key works of Croatian painting, such as ''Small World'' (1904), ''Angelus'' (1906/1907), and ''From the Lagoon'' (1905/1906). Whether he built his landscapes on large canvas formats or captured them on smaller scale surfaces, Vidović always strived to create atmospheric, tonally harmonious, and compositionally balanced works. These characteristics of his work are reflected in ''House by the Water'', which retains the atmosphericity and certain monumentality of much larger Emanuel Vidović's canvases within the smaller dimensions of paper. Here he creates almost minimalistic, monochromatic composition, building architectural elements and landscape elements with broad brush strokes and transparent layers of color. The strong diagonals of the work, particularly noticeable in the way the house depicted is positioned, draw the observer into the landscape and add perspective and depth to it. This charming watercolor once belonged to the collection of art historian and translator Tonko Maroević (1941 - 2020) and was also exhibited at Emanuel Vidović's retrospective exhibition in 1987, held in the then Museum Space, today's Klovićevi dvori Gallery. The exhibition also included a stylistically and compositionally related work ''In Bosnia'' (1919/1920), in which Vidović composes the motif of low houses diagonally in the upper half of the painting, while the lower half of the work is almost abstractly resolved in broad color planes. As a painter who often reworked known themes, Vidović also recorded ''House by the Water'' on another, almost identical watercolor of the same name. This is a slightly later work, dated in 1924, which is known to us from the reproduction published in the catalog of the retrospective exhibition of Emanuel Vidović in the Art Pavilion in 1971. MM

References

IGOR ZIDIĆ, "Emanuel Vidović (1870. - 1953.): Retrospective Exhibition", catalog of the retrospective exhibition in the Museum space, January 15, 1987 - March 1, 1987, MTM, Zagreb, 1987.

Dimensions

width 48 cm, height 30 cm

Description

watercolor and tempera on paper, signed at the bottom right, in red, "E. VIDOVIĆ"

Research information

The work was exhibited at Emanuel Vidović's retrospective exhibition at the Museum Space in Zagreb in 1987 and was published in the accompanying exhibition catalog. Published in: IGOR ZIDIĆ, ''Emanuel Vidović (1870. - 1953.): Retrospective exhibition'', retrospective exhibition catalog in the Museum Space, January 15, 1987 - March 1, 1987, MTM, Zagreb, 1987, p. 142, cat. no. 122 (under the title ''House by the Water'') The comparative work ''House by the Water'' (1924.) was published in: IGOR ZIDIĆ, ''Emanuel Vidović (1870. - 1953.): Retrospective exhibition'', retrospective exhibition catalog in the Art Pavilion, September 17, 1971 - October 10, 1971, Art Pavilion, Zagreb, 1971, p. 9, cat no. 45.

Dating

1922.

PROVENANCE

Tonka Maroević's private collection, Zagreb

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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