Jew with Goose

By 1880 Nicolae Grigorescu was Romania's most celebrated painter, and beside his landscapes and peasant scenes he made small genre pictures of everyday characters from the country's towns and roads. This one shows a Jewish man carrying a petition in one hand and a goose under the other arm. In the Romania of that period a live bird was a common gift to bring along when a person went to ask a favour or press a request with an official, and the painting records that ordinary transaction of small-town life. Grigorescu painted many such passing types, tradesmen, travellers, villagers at market, with the same quick, warm brushwork he used everywhere. The figure is caught mid-errand, dressed for the road, the goose tucked close as he goes to make his case.