The subjects of peasant life collected live are part of Grigorescu’s experience as a realistic painter formed as such within the Barbizon School. In choosing the unidealized motive, in the realism of the observation spirit, we recognize Nicolae Grigorescu from the period immediately following his return from France (1869). The recording of images of rural life is part of his “documentation” approach necessary for the themes of his future work as founder of the Romanian school of modern painting, together with Th. Aman. Grigorescu already knows the direction of these themes, very well even it is that of seeking an artistic expression of the national specificity that the young Romanian state needed so much to assert itself in the cultural concert of European countries.
The artist records the data of the image as the reality of this household presents itself before his eyes, without seeking or encountering compositional harmonies. The zigzag line of the roofs of the three very modest houses clearly divides the oppressive area of materiality from that offered by the sky after sunset. The moment of peace at nightfall, with the final glow of the sunken sun brings the poetic wave of twilight that Grigorescu which always favoured. It contains the three silent human presences, as company to the artist’s solitude. Towards the centre of the image, the discrete scene which is almost unobservable but perfectly identifiable as a subject – the milking of the cow in the evening ritual, by the woman in the red scarf – becomes the life accent that gives meaning to the whole work.
A painting entitled Peasant’s Household from the collection of Minister Ion Manolescu-Strunga (1889 – 1951) was shown in the Nicolae Grigorescu exhibition opened in the Salons of the Youth Club between 1 and 15 June 1938. The catalogue (No. 56) does not indicate the dimensions, so as to make it possible to identify the work. A painting having the same name but different dimensions (?) compared to this one is catalogued in the Grigorescu Centennial Exhibition 1938 (cat. No. 4; L. 41 cm x H. 26.5 cm; L. Catargi Collection).
The work is restored and consolidated.
Orig.: Ion Manolescu-Strunga Collection (?), Bucharest (1938).
