55. On the Porch [cca. 1921-1924]

A consummate master of child portraits, Nicolae Tonitza delves into the souls of his little models and skillfully manages to expose their entire inner universe in his work. His creation is laden with paternal sentiment that will come to dominate his painterly choices. Thus, his main source of creative inspiration will be his own three children. He manages, through an exercise whose starting point coincides with the birth of his first child and which continues throughout the maturation of all his children, to capture a whole carousel of ages and the whole emotional tumult that covers each period of maturation separately. In Tonitza's work, children appear, as he himself stated, "with their charming inexperience, with their harmonious disorder, with their spirited undiscipline”. The artist pays particular attention to the subject starting with the 1920s when he begins to focus more on making a meditative incursion into the theme of childhood. The moment coincides with his settling in Vălenii de Munte, as the painter himself recounted to his good friend, Ștefan Dimitrescu, in a letter sent on August 5, 1921. He had settled there alongside his wife "Titina" (Ecaterina Tonitza), his brother, sister, and his three children; his nieces Ticuleana and Nineta (Nineta Gusti); Țuca, the daughter of his friend and painter Gheorghe Zamphiropol-Dall; and Ionel, the son of his colleague, architect Dimitrie Mohor. The house in Vălenii de Munte was surrounded by a generous garden, where the children could freely play in the orchard, and the adults had the duty to also take care of the many animals that lived around the household. It is not surprising, thus, that among his little muses we find his daughters Catrina and Irina, or his niece Nineta. Preschool age is mainly covered by female portraits. Tonitza attributes various decorative elements to the little muses: bows, bonnets, scarves, or dresses which he studies carefully and details meticulously in his works. He presents the face as a microcosm on which he intervenes, when the case may be, with specific details and a protective lucidity. In the playful theme he finds musical correspondences to the colors he places in his canvases. The little muse of the present work could have been surprised even in the porch of the house in Vălenii de Munte, "a proper porch", as Tonitza characterized it in the letter sent to Dimitrescu in 1921. Surrounded by fruiting vegetation contrasting with her pink dress, Tonitza's protagonist emerges from the visceral strokes of the preliminary drawing, which we find in the collection of the Romanian Academy Library, and merges with the fecund background of the natural space.

References

ȘORBAN, Raoul, "Tonitza", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1973. N.N. Tonitza, "Correspondence. 1906-1939", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978. BREZIANU, Barbu, "N. N. Tonitza", Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1986. PĂULEANU, Doina, "Tonitza", Official Monitor, Bucharest, 2014.

Dimensions

width 26.5 cm, height 30 cm

Description

ulei pe carton, signed upper right, in brown, "Tonitza"

Research information

The artwork was featured in the exhibition “Masterpieces by Nicolae Tonitza from private collections”, Night of Museums 2015, Artmark Galleries. The artwork was also a part of the "Tonitza. Images of childhood" exhibition, Mureș County Museum, 2019, and is reproduced in the exhibition catalog on page 237. The work was part of the “Tonitza and the genius of childhood” exhibition, Artsafari 2019, and is reproduced in the exhibition catalog on p. 214, under the title “In the porch”. A preliminary study of the work, ink on paper, titled "Little girl" (20.9 x 17 cm), undated [1921-1924], is kept in the Library of the Romanian Academy and is reproduced in the catalog of the "Tonitza. Images of childhood" exhibition, Mureș County Museum, 2019.

Dating

cca. 1921-1924

PROVENANCE

Historical collection of Acad. prof. univ. dr. Roman Moldovan (1911-1996)- economist, sociologist, and full member of the Romanian Academy. He published over 200 scientific and didactic works.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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