NUDES BY THE ROMANIAN PAINTER
NICOLAE GRIGORESCU
After the Romanian art was dominated, for centuries, by the Byzantine art and the Christian religion, with all their restrictions, the nude entered in the Romanian painting also through the artwork of Nicolae Grigorescu.
This year 2019 Romfilatelia put into circulation on Friday, February 15th, the postage stamp issue entitled Nudes in Romanian painting , which illustrates the most appreciated works of this kind belonging to Nicolae Grigorescu. Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907), considered to be the great master of the Romanian brush, illustrated in his painting, the symbiosis between the realism of the Barbizon School, the Impressionism and the Symbolism.
Over the years the Romanian postal administration issued several stamps that celebrated the most known works of this renown painter. Link on this site.
“Rarely are those of our painters who have deeply felt the feminine charm, that warmth emanating from the body and face of the woman, that nervous flow that pervades her young being”, said the Romanian art critic George Oprescu.
In the paintings whose images are reproduced on stamps, there are the models that attracted Nicolae Grigorescu the most, mainly the delicate ones, still unformed, slender and willowy, in whom everything was only a promise, and nothing reached to adulthood.
First of all, let us take a look at the only nude stamp issued before the 2019 Grigorescu's nude set. It is the stamp reproducing the picture The Nude by the sea that was issued in 1971. It appears on the cachets of the both new FDCs.
Back to the 2019 set, on the stamp with the face of Lei 2 is illustrated the picture of the Bacchant painting, the most successful of all the nudes painted by Nicolae Grigorescu. It is a medium sized painting and it has been created with a passion and warmth that have been completely transposed into this remarkable plastic composition. The stamp with the face value of Lei 3 reproduces the work After the bath , in which the character is seen from the back, a pictorial manner that makes the most of the delicate line of shapes – the curvature of the neck and the whole-body undulation.
The stamp with the value of Lei 5, which illustrates the painting Entering the bath and the stamp with the value of Lei 19 lei, which reproduces the painting Before the bath, preserve the chromatic harmony and the finer display of the female figures, in a poetic presentation that combines the landscape-light ambience, full of lyricism and urge to dream.
On the "first day" envelope is represented the painting Nude by the sea, which, on the background of the sea and the sky, outlines the elegant, noble figure of a woman looking romantically sideways, the painting combining the realistic treatment of the nude with impressive elements in the interpretation of the landscape.
Painted beside the Black Sea, off the township of Viile, near Constanta, the painting had as model the female character known as Zettina Urechia.
The stamps have the size of 42 x 52 mm and have been produced in 20 stamps sheets, being designed by Mihail Vamasescu. They were printed in 5 color offset on chromium-coated paper (England). For philatelic purposes, the issue was also produced in 4 minisheets (120 x 130 mm, shown above), in a print run of 6,200 minisheets (24,800 series). Source: Press release of Romfilatelia.
The print run of these minisheets looks as being very small but it can be explained by the high face value (124 Lei = 29 US$) of the minisheets, that reduces the number of buyers. The times of "stamps for the masses" are back in the past, for a quite long time... Nevertheless, even if I don't collect stamps anymore, I bought this set of minisheets (on eBay, for $35, the postage fees included). In this way I entered, without knowing in advance, the game of Romfilatelia, which relies on Romanians abroad to realize their financial profits. Which is financially too much for most philatelists in the country is somehow acceptable to many of those abroad. Let us not forget that recently the Foreign Ministry of Romania asked all its embassies to totalize and inform about how many Romanian citizens emigrated. The overall total is 5.6 million, which is about one third of the number of Romanians living in Romania today! Source.
Update
After some time since I got the minisheets, I moved them to a stockbook with other stamps that reproduce nude paintings. Unfortunately, they immediately lost out of brilliance in the presence of sheets issued by the Principality of Liechtenstein in 1977, that were printed by the Austrian State Printing Office and were dedicated to the 400th anniversary of Rubens' birth. The differences stem from the fact that the Liechtenstein stamps are engraved and then printed in high quality, although they were issued more than 40 years before the Romanian ones. The scan below, which reproduces the bottom half of the printed sheet, not being in 3D, reveals only a part of the beauty of the Liechtenstein's engraved sheet. That's why the reproductions after Grigorescu, although very beautiful, appear to be fading in the presence of the Grigorescu's ones. Of course, the wider chromatic gamut of Rubens' painting also contributed to the higher visual impact of the respective minisheet.APPENDIX
This Appendix provides supplementary information about the paintings reproduced on the minisheets.
Nudes in the Works of Nicolae Grigorescu
The nudes were a less used topic in the works of Nicolae Grigorescu. After the study of Paris, the reason of the nude was rarely approached by the Romanian painter. After some time, the subject returned to Grigoresc's creation, becoming more common. This time, nudity no longer suggests an aspect of chastity, the smallness of the forms of the peasant women paintings being abandoned.
The models that attracted most Nicholas Grigorescu were the delicate, still unformed, slim and slimy, batty, in which everything was only a promise, and nothing matured, as in rural areas are the youngsters aged thirteen to fifteen years. But even with this vision of women and their youth, the artist was not entirely satisfied. Often, the lower limbs and sometimes the arms, although preferred to be long and thin, at the painter were disproportionately long and thin, with no support in reality. In Nicolae Grigorescu's conception, the childlike body, he presents with faint and delicate elements, even virginity sometimes, will make any feminine attitude full of grace and gentleness. He was convinced that a woman with full, tumultuous forms could not have such a righteous representation.
Nicolae Grigorescu also painted in his nudes' paintings women whose shapes were irresistible, although it cannot be said that this subject was especially inspiring to him. It is known that nude painting sessions were held in Sébastien Cornu's workshop, where Grigorescu was also studying. Un example is the work entitled The Spring at the Museum of Art in Brasov and the sketch for an ancient or biblical scene called After Bathing from the National Art Museum of Romania. After the study in Paris, the subject of nudes was rarely approached by the Romanian painter.
After some time, the nude subject returned to Grigorescu's creation, becoming more common. This time, nudity no longer suggests an aspect of chastity, again - the smallness of forms in peasants' paintings. The nude in the Elena and Dr. I. Dona Collection, entitled Nude at the Seafront , is most likely made on the beach in Constanta. A similar composition is also the nude from the Zambaccian Museum. George Oprescu said that the person who posed naked cannot be a professional model because he has her face covered, hiding it, not wanting to know that she posed naked to Grigorescu.
The two models, like also the one in the Entering the Water painting, from the Simu Museum collection, are older, they have generous shapes unlike any peasant portrayed by Grigorescu in his portraits or landscapes. To those paintings described so far should be added the one called Before Bath , the one seen from the back and the one called Nude by Alexandru Vlahuta, and which today is known as After the bath .
The most accomplished of all the nudes he has painted is Bacchante. It is a medium-sized painting and it has been painted with a passion and warmth that has been transmitted entirely to this remarkable piece of art. The artist has been able to harmonize all the compositional elements depicted on the image, even the details captured on the smiling face, caught in an ecstasy expressed without any restraint.
There are two more nudes with feeble features of peasant women of the rural portraits. The one was called by Vlahuta The Sleeping Nymph , where the background vaguely suggests the idea of nature, and Careless in which a child is lying down on the back with no restraint. Cast in her nakedness, she raises a flower with both hands at the level of her eyes and looks at her. It can be seen as situated between the exciting and challenging figure of Bacchante, as compared to the physiognomy of this child, showing a great difference. Each of them allows the understanding of the main aspects of the woman's image in the complex psychology of the Romanian artist. Source (in Romanian).