ANDREESCU, Ion

(b. 1850 Bucureşti, d. 1882 Bucureşti)

Romanian painter. He was born in Bucharest into a merchant’s family. Andreescu studied at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest with Theodor Aman (1831-1891) from 1869 to 1872. By 1872 he was an instructor of drawing and calligraphy at the Bishop’s School in Buzãu. He continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1879 to 1881.

In the late 1870s he joined the Barbizon School and painted under the tutelage of Grigorescu. He painted portraits, lyrical national landscapes, and scenes of peasant life that are noted for their soft spectrum and subtle gradations of colour.

In 1881 he returned to Romania, ill with tuberculosis. His death followed shortly in 1882. In 1882 he organized a successful exhibition of his small-scale Impressionist landscapes, peasant portraits and still-lifes.

In 1948, Andreescu was posthumously elected an honorary member of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania.

Edge of the Forest

In 1878, Andreescu was awarded a travel scholarship to France, where he spent to years at the Acad�mie Julian. At Barbizon he was tutored by Grigorescu. he exhibited small landscapes in the 1879, 1880 and 1881 Paris Salons.

Andreescu’s pictures tend to suggest fresh delight in the beauty of Nature, relish of its colours. He was forever trying to create fresh, harmonious art out of what he saw. The rich colours of grass, foliage, rocks, and sky, and the structural appearance of trees in the woods at Fontainebleau, exerted a continual attraction.

Send Postcard Learn More

Winter at Barbizon

In Andreescu’s landscapes the rich colours of grass, foliage, rocks, and sky, and the structural appearance of trees in the woods at Fontainebleau, exerted a continual attraction. But Andreescu was also proficient at intricately nuanced whites, greys and light ochres in a village scene such as Winter at Barbizon, exhibited at the 1881 Paris Salon.

Send Postcard Learn More