Happy Brothers
| Serbian: Vesela braća | |
 | |
| Artist | Uroš Predić |
|---|---|
| Year | 1887 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 122 cm × 82 cm (48 in × 32 in) |
| Location | National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade |
Happy Brothers, Their Poor Mother!, better known simply as Happy Brothers, is an 1887 oil painting by the Serbian artist Uroš Predić. It shows four intoxicated youths walking through their village whilst the mother of one shouts her disapproval from the distance. The painting's humorous content contributed to its popularity, which led to Predić painting two replicas in 1918 and 1922.
Background
Uroš Predić (1857–1953) was one of the most successful 19th- and 20th-century Serbian realists.[1] A native of Orlovat, a village in the Banat region of Austria-Hungary, Predić drew scenes of village life in his sketchbook through his career.[2] One of the more frequent sights during his stays there was of intoxicated young men returning from the pub at dawn and waking up the whole village.[3] In painting the composition, Predić was not only attempting to realistically depict contemporary village life but also to convey a message. "I observed this every day," he explained. "I said to myself there must be some way of telling these people to what an unhappy level they have descended and have a moral impact on them, capturing all the bad habits of my compatriots."[2]
Description
Happy Brothers, Their Poor Mother! (Serbian Latin: Vesela braća, žalosna im majka!, Serbian Cyrillic: Весела браћа, жалосна им мајка!), often referred to simply as Happy Brothers (Vesela braća), is an oil painting that measures 122 by 82 centimetres (48 by 32 in).[4] "It is a glimpse into village life in early fall," Predić explained. "The harvest has been gathered and the pigs slaughtered. The fires have been lit, the spits turned, the drinks dispensed and the celebrations fully under way. The air is filled with the aroma of ... cooking meat ... and the sounds of music and drunken song that disturb the village's peace."[2]
The painting shows four intoxicated youths who have been drinking all night walking rowdily through their village around dawn and waking all their neighbours. They trudge down the middle of the dirt road and distance themselves from the surrounding houses so as to avoid crashing against a wall and hurting themselves. The gajda[lower-alpha 1] player—the most sober of the four—walks ahead of his friends. The one to the left, the youngest of the group, walks barefoot through the mud and props one of his friends up against his shoulder. The man he is propping up, who is the most intoxicated, paid for the previous night's drinks and bounces between shoulders for support. The man to his right has just realized that he is walking by his own dilapidated home. His mother, alerted by the young men's unruly laughter and song, emerges from the house and recognizes her son. She begins shouting at him and says she will spank him once he returns, but the young man simply laughs and sends her an acknowledging wave with his hat. A young girl peaks out the bottom pane of the left window of the house to the far right, wondering if her boyfriend is part of the group. A sign above her reads Szeszfőzde ("distillery" in Hungarian).[5]
Analysis
The art historian Lilien Filipovitch-Robinson posits that the painting is informed by the progressive style of French realists such as Rosa Bonheur and Gustave Courbet. She concedes that there is no documentary evidence to suggest Predić was influenced by Courbet's depictions of peasant life, but notes that the latter's work was in the public domain at the time Happy Brothers was created and was quite popular throughout Europe. Filipovitch-Robinson asserts that Predić rejected both Academic and Biedermeier precision and linearism, and like Courbet, used heavily textured brushstrokes to define the roughness of the muddy road. She also draws parallels between the painting and Courbet's Peasants of Flagey, which was shown at the Paris Salon of 1850–51 alongside The Stone Breakers and A Burial At Ornans.[2]
Reception and legacy
Upon seeing reproductions of the painting, the villagers did not interpret it as a call to change their ways. Instead, they were flattered by Predić's decision to depict them.[2] "To local audiences in particular," Filipovitch-Robinson writes, "such lighthearted didacticism entwined with a familiar and beloved world was immensely satisfying."[6] It is said that on one of his visits home, Predić went to the local pub and encountered the patrons examining a calendar with a reproduction of his painting inside it. A number of patrons—some of whom were included in the composition—tapped him on the shoulder in drunken stupor and commended him on the work.[3] What Filipovitch-Robinson calls Predić's "well-meaning and subtle moralizing" had thus been rendered ineffectual.[2]
Writing for the Novi Sad-based publication Javor in 1890, the critic Milan Rešetar ranked the painting among Predić's finest works up to that point.[7] The Croatian magazine Vienac offered a positive review of the work, saying it offered a sad look at conditions in the Banat. The magazine praised Predić as "a true artist ... one who isn't afraid to use his talent to educate people and nurture the nobler aspects of human nature."[5] Critics were satisfied with Happy Brothers because it not only offered an instructive narrative but also demonstrated the artist's technical abilities.[6] Such vignettes of village life contributed greatly to Predić's popularity among collectors from the emerging Serbian middle class. Reproductions of the painting met with commercial success, further contributing to its popularity. This led Predić to paint two replicas, one in 1918 and the other 1922.[2] By 1890, the original was owned by the National Museum of Serbia,[7] in whose possession it remains.[8]
Notes
Endnotes
Citations
- ↑ Filipovitch-Robinson 2014, p. 31.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Filipovitch-Robinson 2014, p. 35.
- 1 2 Pivnica.net, Vesela braća, žalosna im majka (17 July 2012)
- ↑ Filipovitch-Robinson 2014, p. 36.
- 1 2 Vienac: volume 20, no. 43 (1888), p. 687
- 1 2 Filipovitch-Robinson 2002, p. 366.
- 1 2 Milan Rešetar (16 September 1890). "Уметност" [Art] (in Serbian). Vol. 17 no. 37. Javor. p. 16.
- ↑ Filipovitch-Robinson 2014, p. 319.
Bibliography
- Filipovitch-Robinson, Lilien (2002). "Nineteenth-Century Serbian Painting: A Confluence of Nationalism and Secularism" (PDF). Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers) 16 (2): 361–368. ISSN 0742-3330.
- Filipovitch-Robinson, Lilien (2014). "From Tradition to Modernism: Uroš Predić and Paja Jovanović". In Bogdanović, Jelena; Filipovitch-Robinson, Lilien; Marjanović, Igor. On the Very Edge: Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–1941). Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press. pp. 31–63. ISBN 978-90-5867-993-2.