Peasant Woman with Yellow Headscarf 1905

Stefan Luchian rendered this portrait of a Romanian peasant woman with pastels sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. Luchian was instrumental in establishing modern art institutions in Romania, such as the Societatea Ileana, but his aesthetic interests were always inflected by the dominant style of French Impressionism. This particular portrait invites us to consider the status of the peasant as a symbol of Romanian national identity. Like other Eastern European countries, at this time, Romania was reckoning with its own sense of cultural uniqueness, in relation to the West. The figure of the peasant, with her traditional headscarf, stood for authentic Romanian values. Luchian’s portrait participates in this image-making, yet it also complicates it. The artist avoids idealization, and captures a modern, psychologically complex individual. Analyzing this and other works by Luchian, in light of Romanian social history, will give us a richer sense of this artist's position in his local art world.