Lot 49: VASILIOS CHATZIS GREEK, 1870-1915

ROUGH WATERS

ROUGH WATERS

42.5 by 61cm., 16¾ by 24in.

signed l.r.

oil on panel

PROVENANCE

Private Collection, Athens

NOTE

From his early childhood Chatzis was fascinated by boats and life at sea. He sailed aboard many ships, observing their crews and studying the boats' make-up. Fascinated by how they manoeuvred under different weather conditions he painted them with spontaneous brushstrokes filled with colour and bravura. "The turn towards nature was, nevertheless, fostered and completed by realism. Positivism, the crisis in, and gradual abandonment of, traditional subjects (myths, history) and the turn towards "pure" and incorruptible nature, which is juxtaposed with the teeming urban centres of the first industrial revolution." (quoted in Marina Lambraki-Plaka, ed., Four Centuries of Greek Painting, Athens, 1999, p. 352.)