Ștefan Luchian

Biography

In 1896, in Bucharest, a second exhibition opened beside the official Salon: the Exhibition of Independent Artists. Its main instigator was Ștefan Luchian, and it was opened by Nicolae Grigorescu. At the entrance, tradition has it, a red flag was hung.

Luchian was born on 13 February 1868 (1 February, Old Style) in Ștefănești, in Botoșani County, the son of Major Dumitru Luchian. In 1873 the family moved to Bucharest. His mother wanted him to become a soldier, but in September 1885 he entered the painting class of the National School of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Theodor Aman and Gheorghe Tattarescu. At the same time he studied in the flute class of the Bucharest Conservatory. Later he said that all his life he regretted being unable to play the violin. He regarded Grigorescu as his true mentor and repeated: “Everything I know I learned from Grigorescu.” His first known work, a small picture of a house, is dated 1884.

In the autumn of 1889 he went to Munich and spent two semesters at the Academy of Fine Arts, copying Correggio and Rembrandt. After returning in 1890 he took part in the first exhibition of the Cercul Artistic, a Bucharest art society. In 1891 he went to Paris, to the Académie Julian and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Bouguereau’s academicism did not suit Luchian, but in Paris he saw modern painting: the exhibition of the Independents, paintings by Manet, a retrospective of Van Gogh. “Ultima cursă de toamnă” (“The Last Autumn Race”) clearly shows a connection with Manet and Degas. Later Luchian said that he had learned less at school than from Grigorescu and in museums abroad.

He returned to Bucharest in early 1892, after his mother’s death. From 1893 he had a studio. In 1895 he became vice-president of the Cercul Artistic, and the next year he organised the independents’ exhibition together with Nicolae Vermont and Constantin Artachino. The official critics called him a dandy and an idler. In February 1898 the Ileana society, which had grown out of this circle, held its first exhibition: Luchian showed about twenty pictures, among them “Mahalaua Dracului” (“The Devil’s Quarter”), a landscape of the urban poor. He worked for the magazine Ileana, and in these years turned to Symbolism.

To earn money he painted church interiors: in Tulcea, in Alexandria, and in 1900 in the Brezoianu Church in Bucharest. For the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris he sent two pastels.

In 1901, according to some accounts, the first signs of multiple sclerosis appeared; at the end of the year he entered the Pantelimon hospital. After his discharge in 1902 he joined the society Tinerimea Artistică (“Artistic Youth”) and showed eight paintings at its first exhibition, among them “After the Rain at Băneasa”. At about this time he became friends with the collector Virgil Cioflec, to whom he wrote letters; in 1910 Cioflec published “The Words of a Painter”.

Exhibitions continued at the Bucharest Athenaeum: solo shows in 1904, then in 1907, 1908, 1910 and 1914. In 1905 the buyer of the only painting sold was his former teacher Grigorescu. His inherited fortune gradually dwindled, and he lived in poverty. In 1909 he received the Bene Merenti medal, first class, and in 1911 twelve of his works were shown at the opening of the Alexis Simu Museum.

His illness progressed. In his last years he worked in an armchair: first flowers and landscapes, on which he concentrated especially from 1908, then with the brush tied to his wrist. His last works date from 1913. Success came late: the politician Take Ionescu began to buy his paintings. Then a rumour spread that Luchian was signing other people’s work with his name, and he was briefly arrested on a charge of fraud; among his defenders was the poet Tudor Arghezi. Shortly before his death the violinist and composer George Enescu came to his house and played for him.

Luchian died in Bucharest on 28 June 1916 and was buried in Bellu Cemetery. In 1948 he was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy.