Nicolae Grigorescu

Nicolae Grigorescu (1838–1907) is considered the founder of modern Romanian painting and the most beloved national painter in Romanian art history. Trained in Bucharest, in Paris under Sébastien Cornu, and at Barbizon where he met Millet, Corot, and Rousseau, Grigorescu absorbed French plein-air principles and applied them to Romanian peasant life, ox-cart caravans, the war for independence (1877–1878 as the only artist attached to the Romanian army), and luminous Carpathian landscapes. He was the first painter elected to the Romanian Academy.

Grigorescu painted with broken impressionistic touch, luminous palettes drawn from Barbizon and the early Impressionists, and an unmistakable poetic sensitivity to Romanian rural light. His subjects favor peasants, ox-carts, and rural landscape.

Grigorescu founded modern Romanian painting and produced the definitive painted images of nineteenth-century Romanian peasant life and the 1877 War of Independence.