The Cock Fight
Oil on panel
76 x 55 cm
Not For Sale
Among the best known of his Orientalist paintings from the Balkans are those of domestic life, such as The Cock Fight. In this painting, Jovanović builds a credible, believable scene. The spectators are fully engaged, each one reacts in his or her own particular way, consistent with their age and appearance. The singularity of Jovanović’s approach is even more evident when contrasted to Western European Orientalist paintings such as Jean Léon Gérôme’s famous The Cock Fight of 1847 or Ferentz Eisenhut’s depiction of a cockfight in 1894. Awarded the first prize at the Wien Künstlerhaus exhibition 1898, and having great success at the Paris Salon in 1906, it was widely reproduced in subsequent years and was surely known to Jovanović. It is evident that studies of the figures directly from nature inform this painting. Jovanović was not only providing a new and authentic category of genre paintings but speaking specifically to a culture that was his own. In the process, he was giving significance to an area and ethnic groups heretofore ignored.
Exhibitions with this piece
Pavle Paja Jovanović
Pictures of the Balkan
Pavle Paja Jovanović gained fame and popularity as a painter of people and customs in the Balkans very early, even in the thirties. Thanks to his undoubted gift and great work, as well as the awakened interest of Europe in the Orient in the XIX century, he quickly gained many admirers around the world. The work of Paja Jovanović is enormous in every respect. Generations in the past were brought up on his well-known genre scenes from the life of the Balkan peoples and historical compositions. They resonated most strongly with the people and aroused national feelings in the years preceding the Balkan Wars and the First World War. In that respect, Paja Jovanović was a man of the time in which he lived and created. Aware that at that time he belonged to a modest number of internationally recognized Serbian painters, he accepted the role of an artist who, on an equal footing with artists of other nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, justified the ethnic and cultural identity of Serbs.
Pavle Paja Jovanović
Pictures of the Balkan
Pavle Paja Jovanović gained fame and popularity as a painter of people and customs in the Balkans very early, even in the thirties. Thanks to his undoubted gift and great work, as well as the awakened interest of Europe in the Orient in the XIX century, he quickly gained many admirers around the world. The work of Paja Jovanović is enormous in every respect. Generations in the past were brought up on his well-known genre scenes from the life of the Balkan peoples and historical compositions. They resonated most strongly with the people and aroused national feelings in the years preceding the Balkan Wars and the First World War. In that respect, Paja Jovanović was a man of the time in which he lived and created. Aware that at that time he belonged to a modest number of internationally recognized Serbian painters, he accepted the role of an artist who, on an equal footing with artists of other nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, justified the ethnic and cultural identity of Serbs.