The scene of the cart with oxen in the landscape, seen in a certain season and in the light of a certain time of the day, has existed in Grigorescu’s works ever since the early 1870s, having earned the status of an identity image for the Romanian world in our paintings. In the Exhibition of the Society of the Friends of Beaux-Arts in 1873, the artist’s works included Cart with Oxen (The Return Home), cat. 183, purchased by Prince Carol, a canvas of monumental size.
The theme sometimes present during those decades in the Paris Salon (occurring at Rosa Bonheur or at the painters of the Realistic Italian school) was revisited by Grigorescu as a systematic exercise in the painting of whites, his impressionist-type solution to render en plein air light. In the final part of his creation, the artist drew up series of the theme executed particularly on small frames, easy to carry to the landscape. In this work, in the light of a summer noontime, the animal element is captured up close, in movement, as always, and approached in a palette of whites. In the vision and in the language of this period, Grigorescu abstracts, reducing certain volumes to geometry, as is the case with the peasant’s face, reduced to the round shape of the face which, due to its position, becomes very expressive.
