Portretul marelui ban Năsturel Herescu

"Portretul marelui ban Năsturel Herescu" is a portrait of a member of the Romanian boyar class—the hereditary nobility that had dominated Romanian social and political life for centuries. The title "mare ban" indicates a high-ranking administrative official in the traditional Romanian principality hierarchy. Painted in 1870, shortly after Grigorescu's return from France, the portrait shows him capable of meeting the demands of formal portrait commissions while bringing his French-trained painterly fluency to a subject that might otherwise have produced stiff academic results. Boyar portraiture had a long tradition in Romanian art, typically formal and influenced by Central European conventions. Grigorescu's version would carry a different quality of observation—more attentive to character and less concerned with insignia and status symbols. Now at the National Museum of Art of Romania, the work demonstrates the range of social types Grigorescu was willing to portray in the early 1870s.

Formal portraiture requires Grigorescu to balance his loose painterly instincts against the conventions of likeness and status. The face receives close attention; costume and background are likely handled with greater freedom. His Barbizon training gives the face a tonal richness that academic approaches rarely achieve.