Painter, illustrator, and scenographer Ivan Vavpotič studied in Prague, Paris, and Vienna. After concluding his studies in 1905, he returned home the following year and lived until 1910 with his family in Idrija, where he taught freehand drawing at the local real school. Following that, he returned to Ljubljana and served behind the front lines during WWI as a military painter. After the war, he remained in Ljubljana until the end of his days and, as one of the primary painters of academic realism, he made a name for himself as the city’s portraitist and skyline painter.
In the 1920s, Vavpotič painted several themes from Tivoli Park, with various titles such as Tivoli, Pot v Tivoliju, V gozdu – Tivoli (Podrožnik), etc. These evocative paintings show how a realistic urban painter experienced Tivoli Park in all the seasons that brought him there. The depth of the walking path in the work Pot v Tivoliju (Path in Tivoli) is presented through the experience of a seasoned scenographer, accentuating the perspective of the gravelly paths, surrounded on either side by majestic rows of trees. Towering, thick, green trees cast shadows along the otherwise brilliantly illuminated path. The majority of the figures on the promenade are walking toward the viewer, and only the ones in the back have their backs to us as they recede from view. In the foreground on the right walks what is most likely a produce peddler, dressed plainly with a shawl wrapped around her head and trailed by a man with his hands in his pockets; to the left of them, a more sharply dressed mother and her two children are headed toward the playground. The plein-air painting of vibrant colors is dominated by a light energy and pure joie de vivre.