Cheerful peasant

By 1894 Nicolae Grigorescu had left the forests of Barbizon and the battlefields of Romania's 1877 war of independence behind him, and settled into a quiet house at Câmpina, at the foot of the Carpathians. He was in his mid-fifties, and he had found the subject that would fill his last years: the young women of the surrounding villages, painted again and again with a warmth that borders on affection. This one smiles out of a loose, luminous surface built from creams and soft earth tones, the brushwork quicker and freer than anything he had done in France. Grigorescu is often called the founder of modern Romanian painting, and this warm register is what made him beloved at home. He painted dozens of these peasant girls in the Câmpina years, and kept at them almost until his death in 1907.