Permanent Collection

1870–1900

Jožef Petkovšek

(Verd, 1861 − Studenec, Ljubljana, 1898)

Girl in Pink
1884, oil, canvas, 35,2 x 28,5 cm
signed centre left: Petkovšek / Pariz

NG S 1911, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

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This painting took form in Paris, where Jožef Petkovšek came to live at the end of April or beginning of May in 1884. Only a few works from his 8-month respite in France remain, including a portrait study of a young woman in soft-hued attire. Just like other works from the same period, this portrait relies upon existing techniques and models, which is naturally quite expected for a study trip. Portraits of women with shawls (either on their heads or their shoulders) and visible earrings are found from studios and exhibitions or their catalogs from all contemporary cultural hubs – in Paris, Petkovšek attended Alexandre Cabanel and Gustav Boulanger’s painting school, and spent many hours copying works at the Louvre, Salon, and the Musée du Luxemburg.The work is typical of Petkovšek: he turned a basic, generic formula into something surprising, as the piercing gaze and the subject’s slight tilt towards the lower left corner can be attributed to the artist’s inventiveness. Dekliška Glava (A Girl’s Head) (NG S 1307), another of his Parisian works, is similar in the subject’s clothing and pose, but it is much more conventional, including in terms of how daring the artist’s strokes were.

The piece was owned by Matej Sternen and arrived at the National Gallery in 1922, when the gallery began accepting a greater number of artworks.

ABOUT THE PERIOD

From Romanticism to Realism

The first traces of realism can be observed in the late landscapes by Anton Karinger. In the late 1860s, encouraged by examples from Munich, he gradually discovered the value of a random landscape view. Possibly from direct observation in situ his pictures of forest sections were made then, oil sketches on a small-scale, rendered in free, painterly brushwork, which can also be traced in his select mountainscapes.

With his highly moral and artistic attitude Janez Wolf paved the way for realist tendencies. He was a teacher to the Šubic brothers, Janez and Jurij, and Anton Ažbe. Wolf elevated the status of the artist from the previous level of a craftsman to the level of an artist with a higher mission. He stimulated his pupils to take up studies at art academies and facilitated their enrolments through his personal connections. Wolf’s religious works demonstrate inclination to the art of the Nazarenes, which replaced the older rural Baroque tradition. Wolf’s monumental manner of presenting the human figure by way of emphasizing volume was carried on in the sphere of religious painting by Janez Šubic. While Janez Šubic made use of traditional models of above all Venetian painting, realism in Jurij Šubic’s religious subjects is manifest in pedantic historical and topographical definition of costumes, e.g. in his painting Sts Cosmas and Damien. During his years in Paris, Jurij Šubic worked with the Czech artists Vojteˇch Hynais and Václav Brožík, the Hungarian Mihály Munkácsy and the Croat Vlaho Bukovac, who later took a teaching post at the Prague academy.

Ivan Franke’s travel to the Far East gave rise to a more original style of vedute painting, with an obvious intention of rendering light in a different way.

Realism

Weak and unambitious local demand and the absence of academic centres meant that most Realist and academically trained artists spent a great deal of their creative lives in major art centres, first in Venice, Rome and Vienna, then also in Munich and Paris.

Slovenian painters of the Realist period can be divided into two generations. In the works by the older generation, which includes Janez Šubic and Jurij Šubic, detachment can be observed from the contents and formal language of traditional religious themes and tendencies towards a more exact observation of reality and ever more obvious dealing with painting issues. Realistic approach is evident in Janez’s treatment of the sitters in the portraits of his family members and in Jurij’s down¬to-earth portraits of his contemporaries. Both brothers also tackled the question of psychological characterization in their portraits. The landscape studies in oil which Janez spontaneously sketched in the vicinity of Rome are our earliest plein-air vedute. Jurij’s professional paths led him to Athens and Paris, then to Normandy. While there, he painted minute genre scenes, rendered as plain-air pieces, and he devised the motif which he subsequently elaborated into the picture Before the Hunt which was successfully exhibited at the Salon in Paris. Jointly with his brother Janez he received a prestigious commission to paint frescoes in the Provincial (now National) Museum in Ljubljana.

Jožef Petkovšek, too, relied on French realists and traditions of salon painting in his realist plein-air picture Washerwomen by the Ljubljanica. In his Landscape by a River he already dealt with a purely artistic issue of light and reflections, which brought him close to the Impressionist search. In contrast, his interiors are marked with dark, cool metallic colouring with sharp beams of light, which imbues the genre-like protagonists with anxious, frozen expression.

Ferdo Vesel was inclined to experiment extensively with figure, colour, and technique, which brought him close to the Impressionist search.

ARTISTS

Owner	Birth - death
Anton Ažbe	(Dolenčice, 1862 – Munich, 1905)
Ladislav Benesch	(Slavkov u Brna, 1845 − Vienna, 1922)
Vlaho Bukovac	(Cavtat, 1855 − Prague, 1922)
Ivan Frankè	(Dobje, 1841 − Ljubljana, 1927)
Alojz Gangl	(Metlika, 1859 – Prague, 1935)
Ludvik Grilc	(Idrija, 1851 − Ljubljana, 1910)
Vojtěch Hynais	(Vienna, 1854 − Prague, 1925)
Rihard Jakopič	(Ljubljana, 1869–1943)
Matija Jama	(Ljubljana, 1872–1947)
Ivana Kobilca	(Ljubljana, 1861–1926)
Jožef Petkovšek	(Verd, 1861 − Studenec, Ljubljana, 1898)
Alojzij Repič	(Vrhpolje, 1866 – Ljubljana, 1941)
Matej Sternen	(Verd, 1870 – Ljubljana, 1949)
Janez Šubic	(Poljane nad Škofjo Loko, 1850 – Kaiserlautern, 1889)
Jurij Šubic	(Poljane nad Škofjo Loko, 1855 – Leipzig, 1890)
Ivan Vavpotič	(Kamnik, 1877 – Ljubljana, 1943)
Ferdo Vesel	(Ljubljana, 1861–1946)
Janez Vurnik Jr.	(Radovljica, 1849−1911)
Janez Wolf	(Leskovec pri Krškem, 1825 − Ljubljana, 1884)
Ivan Zajec	(Ljubljana, 1869−1952)