ƒ NICOLAE GRIGORESCU (1838-1907) ROMANIAN PEASANT GIRL, CA. 1896 Oil on canvas pasted on Isorel Signed lower left Oil on canvas laid on masonite; signed lower left 57 X 39 CM - 22 5/8 X 15 3/8 IN. PROVENANCE Private collection, Romania Then by descent to the present owner Private collection, United States RELATED WORKS Nicolae Grigorescu, Happy Peasant Woman, oil on canvas, 135 x 65 cm, National Art Museum of Romania Nicolae Grigorescu, Portrait de jeune paysanne, 1896, oil on panel, 31 x 23 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen, inv. 304 BR "The painter Nicolae Grigorescu was considered, even in his own lifetime, to be the person who knew better than anyone else how to transpose into paint the most characteristic images of the Romanian world. This assessment was part of a series of similar judgements made at the beginning of the twentieth century, a period when all the countries of Europe were searching for their identity and their national characteristics. Romania, still the homeland of the peasant, found its ideal representative in Grigorescu. A peasant himself, the painter of lyrical native landscapes and a great portraitist of the dazzling, vital Romanian woman was considered by critics and exegetes to be a veritable "national monument", a place that still belongs to him today." Denia Matescu, "Un air de parenté: l'héritage français dans la peinture de Nicolae Grigorescu" in. Nicolae Grigorescu (1838-1907) Itinéraire d'un peintre roumain de l'école de Barbizon à l'impressionnisme, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen, 22 April-14 August 2006, ed. Somogy, Paris : 2006, p. 15