Nicolae VERMONT, Wall Lime Cleaning Lady

oil, canvas
30 x 50 cm
signed lower right with brown: Nicolae Vermont
good state of conservation
 

Nicolae VERMONT (Isidor GRUNDBERG) (Moinești, Bacău, 1866 – Bucharest, 1932)

Art Education: Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Bavaria, Germany (1886), where he studied with Ludwig von LÖFFTZ. Bucharest National School of Fine Arts (1881 – 1886) with master Theodor AMAN, colleague of Ștefan LUCHIAN (1868 – 1917), Dimitrie SERAFIM (1862-1931) or Frederick STORK (1872-1942). In addition, he studied in Paris in the studio of Master Diogène MAILLARD (1840-1926). He also worked for a while as an assistant in the workshop of Nicolae GRIGORESCU (1838-1907). He undertook study trips to Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, and Czechoslovakia. Between 1895 and 1936 he organized 16 personal exhibitions in Bucharest and participated in 63 group exhibitions and national salons. His works can be found in state museum collections (MNAR Bucharest, MN Cotroceni, MNA Cluj-Napoca, MA Constanța, Bacău, Brașov, Târgu Mureș, MN Brukenthal Sibiu) and private collections at home and abroad. 

The painting of "gypsies" was a constantly enriched chapter in the work of Nicolae VERMONT, with a particular emphasis placed on the plastic representation of the sinks, women who in the past were busy plastering houses with lime. Relatively accustomed to the images of the beautiful, cheerful florists, signed by the illustrious interwar guild colleagues, Vermont's sinks significantly complete the landscape of emotional experiences, by capturing some characters past their prime, toiling, taking a cigarette break, or sometimes lost in dark thoughts. The painting of "gypsies" was a constantly enriched chapter in the work of Nicolae VERMONT, with a particular emphasis placed on the plastic representation of the sinks, women who in the past were busy plastering houses with lime.  A careful analyst of the inner turmoil of these women of a particular sadness or melancholy, the author manages to emphasize with compassion and at the same time to popularize through specific plastic means, the precarious condition of an entire social category. The washstand and the artist's brush respectively are related tools that unite them, we can believe, in a special intimacy, unrecognizable about any other evoked character. Slightly out of the pattern of the Vermont sinks briefly described above, the "Shive" from the heritage of the Art Depository presents itself, probably dictated by the exuberant youth of the model, on the border between the category of flower stands and that of the sinks painted by the author. From the first gallery, of the florists, they claim their freshness, beauty, ease, and personal charisma, which do not manage to overshadow the melancholy and the cloud of sadness pouring out from within.

Consistent with the subsidiary's message, the composition's plastic language is guided by the author with virtuosity and centered on chromatic symbolism with impressionistic accents. The dull green local tone of a universally valid physical and mental background touches suggestively the lower part of the melancholy female face. Framed by the white scarf, looking absently over the red draped shoulder, it reflects a sad and universal reality of inter-human relations through the lack of visual communication between the character and the viewer.