172. The Trinket Shop [1927]

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172. The Trinket Shop [1927]

Ştefan Popescu

1872, Finţeşti, Buzău - 1948, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 6.000 - 9.000

Sold

EUR 7.000

References

Exhibition Catalogue of "Șt. Popescu" Graphics, Museum of Art of the S.R.R., Bucharest, 1969.

ulei pe carton, 50 x 64 cm, signed and dated bottom right, in black, "St. Popescu, 1927"

Research information

The work participated in the Venice International Art Biennale, 1938. The work is reproduced in the album "Ștefan Popescu", Marvan Workshops Publishing House, 1947, cat. LXIX, under the name "Winter".

PROVENANCE

Mrs. G. Crăciun's collection.

Stefan Popescu's debut in the plastic arts will occur as an autodidact, while simultaneously carrying out a prolific activity as a teacher. Specialized courses will only follow in 1893, when he leaves for Munich to enroll at the Academy of Arts, where he will study drawing under the guidance of Nikolaos Gysis. In his free time, he creates copies of the great masterpieces exhibited at the city's Old Pinacoteca, which he later presents to the public in the showcases of various bookstores. He will then also enroll in the painting courses of the academy in the Bavarian capital and will benefit from scholarships from some Romanian patrons. At the end of his studies, he will join the exhibition movements abroad, but also in his home country, and in 1904 he opens a personal exhibition at the Bernheim Jeune & Fils gallery in Paris. From 1914 he settled permanently in his home country and took as a recurrent pictorial motif mainly the southeast of the country and the much-loved Balchik of the artists of the time. His concern for landscape, constantly reiterated in both painting and drawing, will capture both foreign lands and transcriptions of the Danube Delta, Balchik, Râmnic Valley or Bistrita. It is not the cityscapes that will become the central subject of Stefan Popescu's works, but the sea, rocks and waves, country houses, trees, and snow. The present work was included in the album executed under the artist's supervision, published by the Marvan Workshops in 1947. The work presents a winter landscape where nature dominates the canvas surface, and the trees intensify the fervor under which the artist paints. We can distinguish among the solemn silhouettes of the trees and the extensive snow surfaces the outlines of a house immersed in the cold atmosphere of winter.

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