Portrait of Sister Gjorgi (1908)

Signed and titled at the bottom: “Miloj sestri Gjorgi Vlaho Bukovac Praha 1908” (“To dear sister Gjorgi”)

Bibliography: V. Kruzić Uchytil, Bukovac, Zagreb, Matica Hrvatska, 1968, p. 255, no. 705.

The most important Croatian painter at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and one of the main protagonists of the artistic renewal of the Balkan area, Valho Bukovac, after his Parisian training and resounding success among European high society as a portrait painter, was the key figure of the Croatian pictorial avant-garde, thanks to him conducted for the first time beyond national borders. After holding a highly successful solo exhibition in Vienna, he was given an extensive article in Adolf Loos’ magazine “Die Kunst” and shortly later became associated professor of painting at the Academy in Prague. Bringing a breath of fresh air also to Bohemia, which at the time was focused on Mucha’ s secessionist decorativism, Bukovac adopted and disseminated a fresh and luminous post-impressionism with nuanced contours, which in his Prague years assumed the character of a personal pointillist experimentation, so much so that he created a new proposal outside the patterns of the local tradition and which he used above all in the execution of female portraits.

The portrait of sister Gjorgi, dedicated at the bottom “to his dear sister Gjorgi”, is a perfect example of this production. Dated 1908, it is part of a true moment of rebirth for the painter, following a break from artistic and didactic activity that lasted about a year due to an illness that had forced him to return to his hometown in Dalmatia in 1907. The period immediately following, which lasted until at least 1910, the year in which he executed allegorical scenes for the Agricultural Bank of Prague, was the happy culmination of his career, which also corresponded to his nomination as full professor at the Prague Academy in 1908. This delicate portrait with its dreamy, intimate atmosphere, in which his sister is depicted absorbed in reading, with her elbow resting on an ornate cushion, her hair gathered up in an elegant high chignon and her light-coloured dress adorned with lace, is a sort of manifesto of his characteristic pointillism – first introduced in Prague by Bukovac – made up of a harmonious alternation of fast vertical or oblique segments of colour full of light. Soft tonal accords and luministic effects, which make the composition vibrant and lively and the environment dense with vapour, characterise the entire portrait production of 1908, full of intimate masterpieces such as Balcony, a portrait of his wife, but also nudes of women such as Warm Baths, in which the treatment of the skin and atmosphere, as well as the introspective and elegiac interpretation are undoubtedly influenced by French post-impressionism and represent the highest point of the painter’s production.

Elena Lago