Self-Portrait 

This is Stefan Luchian’s Self-Portrait, made with oil on canvas. It shows us a man both confident and a little unsettling; the slightly raised eyebrow meets the ghost of a smile. Luchian spent much of his career working in Romania at a time of intense artistic change. He resisted the conservative pull of the Romanian art establishment while also incorporating the aesthetic of French Impressionism. We can see that in his brushwork. Luchian was working in a country still finding its place on the world stage; in the late 19th century Romania sought to establish itself as modern and cosmopolitan, like Paris. But like other countries in Eastern Europe, it struggled with its own identity, caught between the economic and cultural dominance of Western Europe and the historical pull of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. To understand Luchian better, we need to understand the artistic institutions that he resisted; but also the wider story of a small country trying to define itself through art.