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Mother and Child - Yet Another Unknown Work by Vlaho Bukovac
Robert Kavazović
; Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti
Sažetak
Vlaho Bukovac (1855–1922) painted one of his masterpieces, the Mother and Child (large size) in 1890., probably on commission by the great collector and art patron, Samson Fox, a rich industrialist from Harrogate in England. There were several versions of the painting. Today, only two seem to be extant. The work in question belongs to the large size version, and it is one of Bukovac’s best achievements from his Paris, i.e., English phase (1877-1893). It is a virtuoso piece done with great detail and translucent layers in the plain air of the artist’s atelier at Montmartre, in the spirit of the prevailing academic realism of James Tissot (Jean-Jacques Tissot) or Alexandre Cabanel, with some indication of impressionist poetics. It is a genre scene of pseudo-rural kind showing frontally in the middle a handsome mother (the face was taken from Bukovac’s sister, Gjore, who, together with her daughter Linda served the master as a live model for some of his works). She is leaning leisurely against a horizontal ledge (or a crevice) supporting a cute chubby little girl (the face is that of Linda) trying to grab her mother’s hand and climb on her shoulders. A pail in the lower right corner is fi lled by a water from a spring, which possibly had some deeper meaning for the artist, a frequent occurrence in the works of that phase. There are two signatures. In addition to the customary two line upper case letters left leaning signature bearing the year of 1890, there is, strangely, an additional signature on the back, also in two lines of upper case letter and the year 1890. In the upper right section over a whitish-grayish ground there is a large, dark blue palette with several brushes, within which Bukovac has placed his signature with the year 1890, also in dark blue. Mother and Child is undoubtedly an authentic Bukovac work, and the two signatures confirm the year 1890. It is obvious that Ms. Vera Kružić Uchytil made a mistake claiming that the smaller format painting was made in 1888, as Bukovac regularly painted small formats after the large size ones. Additionally, the live models for the work were Gjore and Linda who came to Paris only in 1889. Bukovac met his long term patron, Samson Fox, through the London art dealers, Messers Vicars Brothers. Fox was, judging from the above, the person who commissioned both the large and the small version of the Mother and Child. The painting, having left the Fox collection, appeared lost, to reemerge in the collection of C. C. Calloway from Florida, who donated it to the humanitarian organization Duvall Presbyterian Home in 1971, which, eventually, sold it to a private collector in Zagreb in 2006.
Ključne riječi
Harrogate; Montmartre; Messers Vicars Brothers; Samson Fox; Duvall Presbyterian Home; genre scene
Hrčak ID:
148048
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.12.2007.
Posjeta: 1.507 *