Lot 30: Theofrastos Triantafyllidis (Greek, 1881-1955) Nannies in the park 22.5 x 30 cm

Nannies in the park
signed in Greek (lower right)
oil on cardboard
22.5 x 30 cm

A glowing vision of subjective truth and one of the finest examples of the artist’s most famed and admired subject, Nannies in the park transfers an ordinary outdoor scene from its specific location to a world of poetry and transcendental utopia. Although the subject is easily recognizable as a pleasant day at the park, the figures – arranged in the artist’s distinctive manner with a group of seated women in the background and a standing one in the right foreground verge so closely to abstractions that the whole scene seems to dissolve in a dreamlike atmosphere, transformed into expressive emotion. Note that the standing figure on the right, holding a swaddled baby in her lap and turning her head towards the narrative action, appears in an almost identical posture in Easter procession, Triantafyllidis’ masterpiece and one of the most accomplished compositions in Modern Greek painting.

The evocative silence and the featureless faces - a surviving symbolist trait also found in the work of Degas and the Nabis - charge the picture with psychological overtones, moving it beyond the genre and plein-air impressionistic traditions towards German expressionism, which Triantafyllidis had been exposed to during his studies in Munich.