Lot 49

Václav Brožík (1851 - 1901) THE VISIT

From the expert opinion of PhDr. Naděžda Blažíčková-Horová: "The presented figural scene *The Visit* is an indisputably beautiful and characteristic work by Václav Brožík. At the turn of summer and autumn 1879, Brožík, with financial assistance from Charles Sedelmeyer, visited the Netherlands to study Flemish and Dutch painting from the 16th to the 18th centuries. He was most captivated by the fashionable portraits and technically masterful, meticulously painted salon genre scenes from the late 17th century, which depicted moments of leisure among the Dutch patriciate amidst opulent, intimately furnished salons. Their influence was clearly evident in Brožík’s paintings, especially after his return to Paris, when Brožík married Hermína Sedelmeyerová and suddenly found himself in the social circles of Paris’s financial aristocracy. He began creating entire series of compositionally very similar, artfully arranged compositions—unpretentious conversational scenes from the family and social circles in which he moved—which were highly sought after by buyers.
The painting presented here, The Visit, belongs to this series of compositions, outstanding examples of Brožík’s social genre paintings executed in the spirit of Dutch miniatures. The Visit, depicting a meeting between two female friends, is a brilliant painting in which Brožík used color to faithfully capture every detail of the elegant interior and, at first glance, distinguish the types of fabric on both ladies’ dresses; he further accentuated the scene with a small dog."