Ştefan Luchian (February 1, 1868–June 28, 1916) was a Romanian painter, famous for
his landscapes and still life works.
Biography
Early life
He was born in Ştefăneşti, a village of Botoşani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved
to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother wanted to follow his father's path and join the Military
School, but instead chose to join in 1885 the painting class at the Fine Arts School in Bucharest, where he was encouraged to
pursue a career in painting by Nicolae Grigorescu, whose work was to have a major
impact on his entire creation.[1]
Starting autumn 1889 Luchian studied for two semesters at the Munich Fine Arts Academy, where he created copies of the works by Correggio and Rembrandt housed in the Kunstareal. After his return to Romania, he took part in the first exhibition of the Cercul Artistic
art group.
He showed himself unable to accept the academic guidelines imposed by the
Bavarian and Romanian schools.[2] The following year, he left for Paris, where he studied
at the Académie Julian, and, although taught by the academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, became acquainted with impressionist works of art.[3]
Luchian's painting Ultima cursă de toamnă shows the influence of Édouard Manet and
Edgar Degas, but also echoes of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, Modernism, and
Post-impressionism (also obvious in works created after his return to
Bucharest).[4]
Chronic illness and death
In 1896, together with Nicolae Vermont, Constantin
Artachino, and the art collector Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, he was one of
the main founders of Bucharest's Salonul Independenţilor, which was opened in front of the official Salon (the
Romanian equivalent of the Paris Salon).[5] Two years later, the group led to the creation of Societatea Ileana and its press organ,
Ileana,[6] which Luchian was the first to
illustrate.[7] After that moment, Luchian began integrating
Symbolist elements in his work, taking inspiration from various related trends
(Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and Mir iskusstva).[8]
In 1900, Luchian contributed two pastels to Romania's Pavilion at the World Fair, and in the same
year suffered the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis, the disease which, after some
initial improvements, was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, he continued painting and, until 1915, had his
works displayed in numerous exhibitions, albeit to a largely indifferent public.[9] At his 1905 exhibition, the only buyer of a painting was his former teacher Grigorescu. Despite being
appreciated by a select few (including the writer Ion Luca Caragiale),[10] Luchian lived in poverty (the large fortune he had inherited
was progressively drained).[11]
Interior (Lorica), Luchian's last painting (1913)
Paralysed from 1909, he had to live the rest of his life in an armchair.[12] This did not prevent him from working on an entire series of
landscapes and flowers. He had begun flower paintings earlier, but from 1908 he concentrated all his creative energy into the
subject. Toward the end of his life, Luchian was no longer able to hold the painter's brush with his fingers, and was instead
helped to tie it to his wrist in order to continue work.[13]
At the time, he had begun enjoying considerable success — a phenomenon which the writer Tudor
Arghezi attributed to the momentary rise of Take Ionescu as a politician (Ionescu
had become the center of a fashion and subject of imitation, and he was among the first two buy more than one of Luchian's
paintings).[14] As his disease became notorious, a rumor
spread that Luchian allowed someone else to paint in his name; the scandal caused brought Luchian's arrest under charges
fraud (he was released soon after).[15] Arghezi took pride in being one of his few defenders.[16]
One of the last events in Luchian's life was a visit paid to his house by composer and violinist George Enescu; although the two had not met before, Enescu played his instrument as a personal tribute to
the dying artist.[17]
He died in Bucharest and he was buried at the Bellu
Cemetery.
Legacy
By the 1930s, Luchian's impact on Romanian art was becoming the subject of
disputes in the cultural world, with several critics claiming that his work had been minor and the details of his life
exaggerated.[18] Arghezi was again involved in the
polemic, and wrote passionate pieces which supported Luchian's art and attributed adverse reactions to jealousy and to Luchian's
voiced distaste for mediocrity.[19]
In 1948, Luchian was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy. An art school in
Botoşani bears his name.
His life was the subject of Nicolae Mărgineanu's 1981
film, Luchian,
where his character was played by Ion Caramitru (Maria
Ploae was Luchian's sister; other actors starring in the film where George Constantin,
Ştefan Velniciuc, Florin Călinescu as Arghezi, and Adrian Pintea as Nicolae Tonitza).
Gallery
Click on an image to view it enlarged.
Safta the Flower Girl, 1901
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The Well on Clucerului Street 1902-1904
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Old Man Nicolae the Fiddler, 1906
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The River Meadow at Poduri, 1909
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Notes
References
- Ştefan Luchian, Biography at
LinkDesign.ro (text originally published in the 1978 album Luchian)
- (Romanian) Ştefan Luchian at
Artline.ro
- Tudor Arghezi, Scrieri. Proze, Editura Minerva,
Bucharest, 1985
- Vasile Drăguţ, Vasile Florea, Dan Grigorescu, Marin Mihalache, Pictura românească în
imagini, Editura Meridiane, Bucharest, 1970
- (Romanian) Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, "Artachino", in Observator Cultural; retrieved July 14, 2007
External links
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