Nikolaos Gyzis

Biography

The Greek 200-drachma banknote issued from 1996 to 2001 carried “The Secret School” on its reverse. By then its author had been dead for almost a hundred years, and after the age of thirty-two he never lived in Greece for long.

Nikolaos Gyzis was born on 1 March 1842 in the village of Sklavochori on the island of Tinos, the son of a carpenter, Onoufrios Gyzis; there were six children in the family. In 1850 the family moved to Athens, and the boy began attending the School of Arts, first as a listener and from 1854 as a full student. He studied there until 1864. Then a acquaintance, the art lover Nikolaos Nazos, helped him obtain a scholarship from the charitable fund of the Church of the Annunciation on Tinos. With this money Gyzis could continue his education in Munich.

He arrived in Munich in June 1865, travelling by way of Tinos, Syros, Trieste, Vienna and Salzburg. His friend, the painter Nikiforos Lytras, was already living there and helped him settle in more quickly. In October Gyzis entered the Academy of Fine Arts, in the antique class of Hermann Anschütz; Alexander Wagner is also named among his first teachers. In June 1868 he was admitted to the studio of Karl von Piloty. In 1869 Gustave Courbet came to Munich for an international exhibition, and Gyzis met him. His studies ended in 1871.

Among his early Munich works are “News of Victory” (1871), linked to the Franco-Prussian War, and the composition “The Triumph of Bavaria” for the conference hall of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Nuremberg (1895–1899). It was destroyed in the Second World War, as was his ceiling painting for the museum in Kaiserslautern (1878–1880).

In April 1872 he returned to Athens and turned his father’s house on Themistokleous Street into a studio. There he was received as an established artist. In 1873 he travelled to Asia Minor with Lytras. Subjects on Greek themes date from this time: “The Engagement” (1875), “Carnival in Athens”, and later “After the Destruction of Psara” and “The Secret School” (1885). “Eros and the Painter”, his first genre painting, is also counted among his best-known works. In May 1874, disillusioned with conditions in Athens, he left again for Munich and stayed there for the rest of his life. In 1876 he visited Paris with Lytras. At the Paris World’s Fair of 1878 he received a third-class medal for the painting “The Betrothal of the Children in Greece”.

His letters survive, mostly to Nazos. In one, from April 1875, he complains how poor a painter is beside a poet, and says that if he were born again he would become a poet and a musician. In another, from June 1873, he explains that he has to pay for models in the composition class himself, and that the scholarship money arrives late.

From 1880 Gyzis was an honorary member of the Munich Academy. He taught there from the 1880s; the dates differ: by some accounts from 1882, by others he became a professor in 1886, while the title of professor was conferred in 1888. His students are said to include Stevan Aleksić, Octav Băncilă, Ștefan Popescu, Nikolaos Vokos, Luděk Marold, Stanisław Maćke, Thalia Flora-Karavia, Ernst Oppler, Fritz Osswald and Alfred Juergens. In those years he painted genre scenes, portraits, landscapes and still lifes, posters, caricatures and book illustrations; his work was bought in Germany, England, the United States and Greece. To my mind, the most interesting of his Munich works are the late drawings in charcoal and chalk: art historians see in them a departure from academic realism.

In the 1890s he turned to religious and allegorical subjects. The chief work of this period, “Behold, the Bridegroom Cometh” (1895–1900), is in the National Gallery in Athens; “The Triumph of Religion” is also known. The central figure in such compositions is a woman, appearing as Art, as Music, as Spring. In 1895 he visited Greece for the last time.

Gyzis died in Munich in early 1901: on 4 January in the new style, or 22 December 1900 in the old style. He was buried in the Nordfriedhof, the North Cemetery of Munich. After his death his works were shown at an international exhibition at the Glass Palace.