Nikiforos Lytras
1832–1904 · Greece · Munich school
The story
When Greece became an independent kingdom in the 1830s it had almost no tradition of modern painting to call its own, and the man who did most to build one was Nikiforos Lytras. He was born in 1832 on Tinos, the Aegean island famous for its marble carvers, and grew up the son of one of them before winning a scholarship to Munich, then the training ground for ambitious young painters across Europe.
In Munich he studied under Karl von Piloty, a master of large historical scenes, and absorbed the polished, dark-toned academic manner that became known as the Munich School. He brought it home to Athens in 1866 and taught at the School of Arts there for 38 years.
Lytras turned that borrowed style to Greek life: village weddings, children singing carols, mourning women, the everyday scenes of a young nation looking at itself. Nearly every notable Greek painter of the next generation passed through his classroom. He was still teaching there in 1904, the year he died in Athens.
