oil on canvas, 150 x 101 cm, signed and dated lower left, in brown, "O. IVEKOVIĆ 1931."

Research information

The painting "Nikola Šubić Zrinski" was painted by Iveković forty-one years after he painted the first version of this painting titled "Nikola Zrinski before the charge from Siget", which is today kept in the Croatian History Museum.

The painting "Nikola Šubić Zrinski" was painted by Iveković in his studio in Lobor at the request of an interested buyer, exactly fourty one years after he painted the first version of this painting titled "Nikola Zrinski before the charge from Siget" in Vienna, which is today preserved in the Croatian Historical Museum. Oton Iveković can be considered the founder of Croatian historical painting within the framework of modern painting. He painted historical compositions with patriotic zeal in the footsteps of pointillist Vlaho Bukovac, whom he was friends with while Bukovac was staying and working in Zagreb (1893-1898). During his creative life, he painted more than a thousand paintings, also working in fresco painting, graphic design of books, magazines and posters, and illustration. He was a visual commentator, travel writer and polemicist, even a military painter. During the Second World War he was sent to the front twice with assignments to record events in drawings (1916 and 1917). After the war, he lived and worked in Zagreb, where many paintings inspired by Croatian tumultuous history were created, as well as, of course, a series of watercolors and oil paintings with motifs from the surroundings of Zagreb which he exhibited in the Ullrich Salon during 1918. His first auction exhibition was named "For the National Gift to Conte Ivo Vojnovic" held on February 5th, hosted by painter Ljubo Babić. At the beginning of 1919, Iveković bought Veliki Tabor Manor near Klanjec and from then on lived and painted there - in the heart of Hrvatsko Zagorje - until the end of his life. As for his historical compositions, it's worth noting that he completed a special course for historical painting at the Vienna Academy (1887 - 1891), that he dedicated himself to historical themes from Croatian past during the aforementioned studies, and that he was given the nickname "Zrinimaler". Furthermore, he immortalized one of the most beautiful love stories from Croatian history with a sad ending in three slightly variant versions (1897, 1901 and 1903) on remarkably impressive paintings all titled "The Farewell of Katarina from Peter Zrinski". Iveković often dedicated himself to the great figures and heroes from the Zrinski family and their defenses of Croatian identity and people. For example, to Nikola Šubić Zrinski already in 1890 when he created a painting in Vienna with vivid colors of historical costumes dedicated to the defense of Siget titled "Nikola Zrinski before the charge from Siget" (today in the collection of the Croatian Historical Museum in Zagreb). Since 1905– when his two most reproduced historical paintings "The Arrival of the Croats to the Sea" with a panoramic frame of landscape (today in the National Museum of Modern Art) and "The Coronation of King Zvonimir" with a symbolic depiction of the coronation and characters again placed in beautiful landscape (today in the Croatian Historical Museum) were created, Iveković continued to paint and interpret key and mythical themes from Croatian history, such as "Death of Peter Svačić" or "Matija Gubec at Execution Site" (both today in the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb) which, nota bene, were first presented to the general public at the big exhibition "Half a century of Croatian art" in 1938 in the Meštrović pavilion of visual artists.

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