35. Child's Head [1924-1926]

Nicolae Tonitza

1886, Bârlad - 1940, Bucureşti

Estimate

EUR 15.000 - 25.000

Sold

EUR 39.000

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Session

Thu, 21 March 2024 19:00

Nicolae Tonitza, a master of child portraiture, penetrates the souls of his small models and skillfully exposes their entire psychology in his work. His creation is laden with the paternal sentiment that will dominate his pictorial choices. Thus, his main source of creative inspiration will be his three children. He manages, through an exercise that started with the birth of his first child and continued throughout the maturation of all his children, to capture an entire age's carousel and the emotional whirlwind that covers each maturation period. In Tonitza's works, children appear, as he himself stated, "with their charming inexperience, their harmonious disorder, their winged indiscipline”. He pays special attention to this subject starting in 1924 when he starts to focus more on making a meditative incursion into the theme of childhood. His child portraits bring him success, a broad series of personalized orders, and cements his position in Romanian art history. Among his young female muses we find Catrina and Irina, his daughters; Nineta, his niece; Katiuşa lipoveanca, or "just a girl" (often depicted sitting, reading or playing). He does not stop at autochthonous inspiration, but fills his canvases with Dutch, Tartar, Russian, or Italian girls. Sometimes, the title proposed by the artist indicates the profession of the parent of the painted child: "The Clown's Daughter", "The Ranger's Daughter", "Magnate's Girl" or "Florist's Boy" are just a few examples. Other times, it indicates the model's social status both through representation and through name - he paints orphan children, healthy or sick children, children dressed in bright clothes or children matched with traditional folk costumes. His smallest models - the newborns, are identified mainly through the indications offered by the artist in the title of the work. The newborn appears as a blank page, devoid of biography and without specific characteristics. Preschool age is mostly covered by female portraits. Tonitza assigns various decorative elements to his small muses: bows, bonnets, kerchiefs or dresses that he studies carefully and details meticulously in his works. Most of his portraits include a single face. The artist focuses mainly on a single human figure and allocates enough time to capture both the physiognomy and the entire psychology of the depicted model. In the gaze of his muses, Tonitza hides an entire universe and reflects a story's glimmer.

References

SORBAN, Raoul, "Tonitza", Meridiane Publishing, Bucharest, 1973. BREZIANU, Barbu, "N. N. Tonitza", Meridiane Publishing, Bucharest, 1986. PĂULEANU, Doina, "Tonitza", Official Monitor, Bucharest, 2014.

Dimensions

width 14 cm, height 19 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed bottom left, in black, "Tonitza"

Dating

1924-1926

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