Lot 7: VASILIOS CHATZIS

VASILIOS CHATZIS GREEK 1870 - 1915 THE CRUSADER INVASION OF CONSTANTINOPLE signed lower left oil on paper laid on canvas 141 by 247.5cm., 55½ by 97¼in.

Athens, Panhellenic Exhibition, 1948

Stelios Lydakis, Geschichte der griechischen Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1972, fig. 68, illustrated

Greek Royal Collection
Private Collection (purchased from the above in 1993)

Chatzis's dramatic depictions of life at sea and virtuoso brushwork made him one of the most accomplished marine painters in Greece. Here he depicted the sack of Constantinople, a crucial event in the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), in which the Crusaders succeeded in capturing and pillaging the city.

Chatzis represented a departure from tradition, and a vibrant new perspective, changing the face of marine painting as seen by Greek artists. As stated by Marina Lambraki-Plaka: 'The exodus from the shadowy workshop to the brilliant light of the outdoors was a revelation for painters. There they became aware that the image of nature was being ceaselessly transformed by the flow of time and the change of light, that strong, natural colours bore no relationship to the browns, greys, and whites of traditional landscape painting, that the academic technique, laborious and slow, was inadequate for conceiving of things in their flow and interpreting nature as a continual state of becoming and not just an event. Thus impressionism was born. (...) Their paintings glow with luminosity, pulse and colour and transmit to the viewer the vitality of euphoria' (Marina Lambraki-Plaka, ed., Four Centuries of Greek Painting, Athens, 1999, p. 352).

A student at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Lytras and Volanakis, Chatzis is known for his depictions of boats and life at sea. So impressive were his works that during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, under government order, he was posted on a warship to record the actions of the Greek fleet.