Vjekoslav Karas
(1821-1858)
A Portrait of Ana Krešić, 1852-1856
oil on canvas
78×59 cm
MG-77

A Portrait of Miško Krešić, 1852-1856
oil on canvas
78×59 cm
MG-78

Painter and composer Vjekoslav Karas was one of the storied Croatian artists who, along with Josip Račić, ended his life by suicide because he felt that the world failed to understand him. Karas’s unsystematic education and training in painting began with him taking lessons from amateur Karlovac-based painters. Thanks to his patrons, in 1838 he travelled to Italy to be schooled. He first stayed in Florence, where the Zadar-born painter Franjo Salghetti-Drioli (1811-1877) set him up in a studio. Karas frequented Florence’s churches and public collections to make copies and studies, and attended anatomy classes at the Grand Duke Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1841 and 1847 he resided in Rome, where he became acquainted with the Romantic religious painting of the Nazarene Movement. Whilst in Rome, he also met the Rijeka-born painter Ivan Simonetti (1817-1880). During his occasional stays in Zagreb, he adopted Ljudevit Gaj’s (a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer) Illyrian ideas. Owing to a lack of financial means, in 1848 he finally returned to Croatia. Abject poverty forced him to travel across Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and produce commissioned works. From 1852 to 1858 when he died, he lived and worked commuting between Karlovac and Zagreb.

In terms of style, Karas’s oeuvre features Classicism, Nazarene Romanticism and Biedermeier Realism, with his portraits of spouses Ana and Miško Krešić being his anthological climax. Both portraits are condensed in form and non-descriptive in detail, and depict two progressive bourgeois with their physiognomies unbeautified. The spouses’ psychological characterisation is reflected in their pursed lips and a penetrating, almost rough gaze, with Ana Krešić’s hands being a masterpiece of successful realistic depiction. Karas did not sign the portraits because, as with most of his paintings, he was dissatisfied with their quality and “always strived to be better”, as he himself stated.

Text: Dajana Vlaisavljević, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

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