Lot 50: Gheorge Tattarescu , Romanian 1818 - 1894 11 February 1866 - The Modern Romania oil on canvas

signed and dated Tattarescu / 1866. lower right; inscribed 11. FEBR. upper centre oil on canvas

31 by 23.7cm., 12 by 9¼in.

Private Collection, Belgium
Purchased from the above in the 1990s by the present owner

We are grateful to Ioana Cristea of the Gheorge Tattarescu Museum, Bucharest for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
PROPERTY FROM A BELGIAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
The inscription 11 FEBR in the present work refers to the date of the abdication of the first ruler of the modern state of Romania, the Moldavian Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza. The country had been formed by the unification of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (the 'monstrous coalition') in 1859. Cuza's successor was the Austrian Prince Karl von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The election of a foreign prince with ties to an important princely house had been one of the liberal aims of the 1848 Revolutionaries.
There are two coloured versions of the same subject with similar dimensions in the Gheorge Tattarescu Memorial Museum and in a private collection, Romania.