Even without focusing on art history, a person tends to become familiar with the major artists in the Western canon. Iconic images by painters like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Cezanne appear everywhere, from textbooks to restaurant décor. Such artists seem to have been the only ones that mattered.
Of course, they did matter, and still do. Yet there is plenty of room in the sweep of Western art to turn our attention also to persons outside of this canon. It is particularly rewarding to consider artists whose legacies were created in lands long under the yoke of foreign empires. Here, artists were painting not just for commissions or pleasure: they were painting so that their works could be pillars in the quest to establish or preserve a suppressed national culture.
Examples of such painters include 19th-century Polish masters Jan Matejko (1838-1893) and Józef Chełmonski (1849-1914) whose canvases encapsulate a national identity born in Renaissance times when Poland was a vast kingdom. That grandeur would be chipped away in the 17th and 18th centuries by subjugators like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. By 1795, Poland had disappeared as an independent nation with sovereign borders. For the next two hundred years, it would be artists, standing with poets and composers, who fought to keep her culture intact.
I speak, too, of painters like László Paál (1846-1879) who gathered up the tender magnificence of the Hungarian countryside and poured it across his canvases, freezing the pristine beauty of a land undergoing transformation by industrialization.
On the Smithsonian Journeys’ route I have just completed called Pearls of Croatia and Slovenia, there are two painters whose appealing works made strong contributions to their national cultures. The first is Ivana Kobilca (1861-1926), a Slovenian artist whose style celebrates the meeting of late Romanticism with Impressionism. Kobilca’s works are beautiful and can stand next to those by any European artist of her period.
Slovenia is a small country historically claimed by outsiders, especially the Austro-Hungarians and, in more recent times, Communist Russia. Slovenia had other conquerors too, including Napoleon in the early 19th century who, ironically, brought Slovenians temporary liberation from the Habsburgs and a precious chance to rescue a Slovenian language that had been nearly eliminated by the Habsburgs’ imposition of German. Thus it is that paintings by Kobilca and her Slovenian colleagues continued the Slovenian struggle to protect their cultural heritage.
A second artist of note along this route was born in the southern part of today’s Croatia, a stunning stretch of Adriatic coastline that goes by the name Dalmatia or, in its past, the Republic of Ragusa. Dalmatia enjoyed centuries of prosperity until that same Napoleon wreaked disaster (there was no rainbow as there had been for Slovenians). As the 19th century wore on, a budding school of Dalmatian painters began to attract attention. Of these, the principal figure was Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922).
His most impressive work is arguably the ceremonial curtain of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb. Entitled The Reformation of Croatian Literature and Art, this composition was commissioned by the government to express their official theme of “Glorification of the Illyrian Revival as a Continuation of Dubrovnik’s Education,” later shortened, thankfully, to “Glory to Them.” The story of Croatia’s legendary Ilyrians, a Paleo-Balkan population that, along with Thracians and Greeks, inhabited the western part of the Balkan Peninsula, is narrated by grandiose, but delicate allegorical figures who fill this massive “canvas.” Persons of honor include the beloved Baroque poet Ivan Gundulić (1589-1638), about whom Bukovac created his most beloved painting, where the Muse touches the poet and his vision is revealed.
Yet, on a day-to-day basis, Bukovac worked as a popular portrait painter, taking on both simple and high-profile commissions, including some from neighboring royal families. All told, Dalmation culture was reignited in the collective works of Bukovac.
It is possible to walk into the past with Bukovac by visiting his familial home, which lies on a peninsula called Cavtat, a 45-minute sail east of Dubrovnik across the crystal-clear Adriatic. Cavtat is a Venetian-style fishing village where time has stopped. With its narrow alleys, pearlescent-grey stone houses, tiled red roofs, and ubiquitous cafes, a visitor is drawn into a timeless past.
The Bukovac House-Museum lies just a few steps from Cavtat’s waterfront. There, one sees not only a generous exhibit of his paintings, but the halls and rooms where he played as a child. Visitors feel the charm of this home. Period furniture, most of it belonging to the family, fills the rooms. Fanciful murals of animals that young Vlaho habitually painted still decorate the walls of the staircase.
Between 1898 and 1902, Bukovac returned to this house to live and work. On the second floor, a large space that represents his atelier is refurbished with modern flooring and lighting. Logistically this room is serving the purposes of today’s visitors, but still manages to convey the atmosphere of his studio long ago. A broad oriental carpet warms the room’s appearance. Some of his paintings are set precariously on easels, as though the painter has stepped out for a walk and will return soon to pick up his brushes.
Learning about so-called secondary or “tangential” figures like Kobilca and Bukovac alters how we view Western art. We continue to study the masters we embraced in our youth. But they did not work in isolation. Their ideas were shared not only by their equally famous compatriots, but by countless artists across a wide range of geographical borders. Those borders did not stop the flow of styles and techniques that continuously reshape artistic expression.
So look beyond the familiar names. Pick a place about which you are curious, or perhaps choose a place where your own family has hereditary roots. Look up the local artists who worked in that land, and discover their masterpieces. Rather than losing focus by devoting time to artists from countries like Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, or Slovakia, we enhance our understanding of the masters whom we already love. Those canonical figures do not pale when placed against a broader range of artists, but are seen in a clearer perspective, either as the initial innovators or as strong members of a brotherhood that has united artists across time.