Permanent Collection

1870–1900

Vojtěch Hynais

(Vienna, 1854 − Prague, 1925)

The Death of Samson, Study for a Painting
1880, oil, canvas, 27 x 46 cm

NG S 3397, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

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At the centre of this small, symmetrical sketch, we see the biblical hero as he staggers and falls, pulling down with him the pillars of the temple, in which a crowd has gathered. The forceful and sketch-like brushwork creates a flickering, romantic mood for one of the most dramatic scenes from the Old Testament.

Samson was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Judges, which consists of stories of the leaders of Israel before the election of Saul as king, which marked the transition from tribal society to organised statehood. Samson’s strength, his fight with a lion, his betrayal by Delilah, his blinding and his spectacular death are all popular subjects in art. The Czech painter Vojtěch Hynais, who was born in Vienna and also trained there, was undoubtedly familiar with the monumental painting Samson and Delilah by Anthony van Dyck at the city’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, to which this sketch corresponds in terms of its symmetry and compositional emphases.

The sketch came to the National Gallery as part of a bequest of the Šubic family and is a practical illustration of the friendship between Vojtěch Hynais (1854–1925) and the brothers Janez and Jurij Šubic. Hynais travelled to Rome with Janez Šubic, while Jurij Šubic joined him in Paris and helped him work on his design for the curtain of the Prague National Theatre.

ABOUT THE PERIOD

From Romanticism to Realism

The first traces of realism can be observed in the late landscapes by Anton Karinger. In the late 1860s, encouraged by examples from Munich, he gradually discovered the value of a random landscape view. Possibly from direct observation in situ his pictures of forest sections were made then, oil sketches on a small-scale, rendered in free, painterly brushwork, which can also be traced in his select mountainscapes.

With his highly moral and artistic attitude Janez Wolf paved the way for realist tendencies. He was a teacher to the Šubic brothers, Janez and Jurij, and Anton Ažbe. Wolf elevated the status of the artist from the previous level of a craftsman to the level of an artist with a higher mission. He stimulated his pupils to take up studies at art academies and facilitated their enrolments through his personal connections. Wolf’s religious works demonstrate inclination to the art of the Nazarenes, which replaced the older rural Baroque tradition. Wolf’s monumental manner of presenting the human figure by way of emphasizing volume was carried on in the sphere of religious painting by Janez Šubic. While Janez Šubic made use of traditional models of above all Venetian painting, realism in Jurij Šubic’s religious subjects is manifest in pedantic historical and topographical definition of costumes, e.g. in his painting Sts Cosmas and Damien. During his years in Paris, Jurij Šubic worked with the Czech artists Vojteˇch Hynais and Václav Brožík, the Hungarian Mihály Munkácsy and the Croat Vlaho Bukovac, who later took a teaching post at the Prague academy.

Ivan Franke’s travel to the Far East gave rise to a more original style of vedute painting, with an obvious intention of rendering light in a different way.

Realism

Weak and unambitious local demand and the absence of academic centres meant that most Realist and academically trained artists spent a great deal of their creative lives in major art centres, first in Venice, Rome and Vienna, then also in Munich and Paris.

Slovenian painters of the Realist period can be divided into two generations. In the works by the older generation, which includes Janez Šubic and Jurij Šubic, detachment can be observed from the contents and formal language of traditional religious themes and tendencies towards a more exact observation of reality and ever more obvious dealing with painting issues. Realistic approach is evident in Janez’s treatment of the sitters in the portraits of his family members and in Jurij’s down¬to-earth portraits of his contemporaries. Both brothers also tackled the question of psychological characterization in their portraits. The landscape studies in oil which Janez spontaneously sketched in the vicinity of Rome are our earliest plein-air vedute. Jurij’s professional paths led him to Athens and Paris, then to Normandy. While there, he painted minute genre scenes, rendered as plain-air pieces, and he devised the motif which he subsequently elaborated into the picture Before the Hunt which was successfully exhibited at the Salon in Paris. Jointly with his brother Janez he received a prestigious commission to paint frescoes in the Provincial (now National) Museum in Ljubljana.

Jožef Petkovšek, too, relied on French realists and traditions of salon painting in his realist plein-air picture Washerwomen by the Ljubljanica. In his Landscape by a River he already dealt with a purely artistic issue of light and reflections, which brought him close to the Impressionist search. In contrast, his interiors are marked with dark, cool metallic colouring with sharp beams of light, which imbues the genre-like protagonists with anxious, frozen expression.

Ferdo Vesel was inclined to experiment extensively with figure, colour, and technique, which brought him close to the Impressionist search.

ARTISTS

Owner	Birth - death
Anton Ažbe	(Dolenčice, 1862 – Munich, 1905)
Ladislav Benesch	(Slavkov u Brna, 1845 − Vienna, 1922)
Vlaho Bukovac	(Cavtat, 1855 − Prague, 1922)
Ivan Frankè	(Dobje, 1841 − Ljubljana, 1927)
Alojz Gangl	(Metlika, 1859 – Prague, 1935)
Ludvik Grilc	(Idrija, 1851 − Ljubljana, 1910)
Vojtěch Hynais	(Vienna, 1854 − Prague, 1925)
Rihard Jakopič	(Ljubljana, 1869–1943)
Matija Jama	(Ljubljana, 1872–1947)
Ivana Kobilca	(Ljubljana, 1861–1926)
Jožef Petkovšek	(Verd, 1861 − Studenec, Ljubljana, 1898)
Alojzij Repič	(Vrhpolje, 1866 – Ljubljana, 1941)
Matej Sternen	(Verd, 1870 – Ljubljana, 1949)
Janez Šubic	(Poljane nad Škofjo Loko, 1850 – Kaiserlautern, 1889)
Jurij Šubic	(Poljane nad Škofjo Loko, 1855 – Leipzig, 1890)
Ivan Vavpotič	(Kamnik, 1877 – Ljubljana, 1943)
Ferdo Vesel	(Ljubljana, 1861–1946)
Janez Vurnik Jr.	(Radovljica, 1849−1911)
Janez Wolf	(Leskovec pri Krškem, 1825 − Ljubljana, 1884)
Ivan Zajec	(Ljubljana, 1869−1952)