7. Newspaper Seller [1920]

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7. Newspaper Seller [1920]

Nicolae Vermont

1866, Bacău - 1932, Bucureşti

Estimate:

EUR 900 - 1.600

Sold

EUR 2.000

References

VRANCEA, Angela, "N. Vermont", State Publishing House for Literature and Art, Bucharest, 1956.

oil on cardboard, 26.5 x 13.5 cm, signed and dated lower right, in black, "N. Vermont, 1920"

During his childhood, in the painter's house from Bacau was hosted for a while the painter Nicolae Grigorescu, who arrived in the Moldavian city to direct and deepen his studies of painting and drawing on Jews. The young Nicolae Vermont will be allowed access to the workshop of the great master from Campina, which will lead to the discovery of the fascination for his work. Vermont will go to study at the Fine Arts School at only 15 years old, in Theodor Aman's class. He will manage to go to study in Munich with the help of his brother-in-law, Ventura, and will stay there for eight years. Here he learns the technique of drawing and composition, which he will continually perfect throughout his life. From Munich he constantly sends Ventura works which him, in turn, take to the Artistic Circle or the Official Salon. In his work, Nicolae Vermont focuses on portraying the life of people on the outskirts of cities. He dedicates an entire series to hawkers, rural life, maternity, worker portraits, or children's faces. He excels in transcriptions of peasant and hawker girls and shows an interest in the female character. We less often find the male model in his work - the portrait of Hagianoff, a wealthy Bulgarian merchant, but we are more likely to find silhouettes of hooligans, various types of Gavroche or newspaper boys. In this work, shades of grey, green and black predominate, the loaded and locally somber atmosphere. We note the mail bag carried on one shoulder, the small jacket and beret from under which flows brown hair. The background does not offer us many clues about the boy's identity, but the clothing and chromatic options reveal to us the portrait of a small worker.

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