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  • Paja Jovanović and the Imaging of War and Peace
  • Lilien Filipovitch Robinson

[Images]

Pavle (Paja) Jovanović (1859-1957) experienced an unprecedented level of international success among Serbian painters1 from the onset of his professional career as a painter of Balkan scenes. While what he presented to a highly receptive international public was what on the surface appeared as primarily genre subjects associated with the contemporary Orientalist tradition, his visual exploration was far broader. Clothed in the exotic and consistent with the methodology of his genre paintings, he also depicted subjects of history, both specific and general, in monumental and modest formats as well as explorations of historical personalities. This paper considers paintings representative of these categories and more specifically, Jovanović's interpretation and stylistic response to a range of events and circumstances in the lengthy history of the Serbs at war and at peace, their aspirations, challenges, and triumphs. It further considers the works in the context of a critical period of internal events and concurrent international engagement in, and decisions regarding, the Balkans and, specifically, Serbia. The primary focus of this paper is on the paintings produced in the first phase of Jovanović's career (1882-1912) although the artist was professionally active until his death in 1957.

Jovanović was born in Vršac in the Banat district of Vojvodina, which while part of Hungary, had drawn Serb settlers in increasing numbers since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. A community of Hungarians, Rumanians, and Serbs, as well as other ethnic groups, it represented a level of prosperity and cultural enlightenment even in the late eighteenth century that surely influenced and facilitated the development of the talented and precocious young artist.2 His hometown provided Jovanović with initial training in [End Page 35] drawing and, more significantly, exposure to the works of Serbian master painters such as Pavel Djurković and Arsenije Todorović, whose paintings represented a merging of traditional Serbo-Byzantine and the newer Central European Baroque styles. Like most students, he spent time copying the works available to him. In Vršac these were primarily portraits and church paintings. Jovanović's creative energies found further encouragement and mentoring in the home, as his father was an established and respected photographer. It is fair to assume that Jovanović's early familiarity with photography had an indelible impact on the development of his artistic vision and that the careful scrutiny of reality and insistence on accuracy are not attributable solely to his subsequent academic training. That he had achieved a level of artistic credibility even in these early years is supported by the fact that Jovanović was commissioned to produce a group of preparatory drawings for the bell tower of the main church in Vršac. Armed with this level of training and early accomplishments, and following the educational route of other young Serbs, Jovanović set his sights on study in Vienna, specifically at its famous art academy.

In 1877, at eighteen,3 after two years of instruction at a drawing school, Jovanović enrolled at the Vienna Academy. By 1879, his studies were being supported by a scholarship funded by Matica Srpska.4 The instruction he received at the drawing school and the carefully structured curriculum of the Academy were essential to Jovanović's development of an artistic vocabulary and methodology that would place him on a competitive level with the most promising of European artists. Regardless of subject, the paintings he produced throughout his career testify to his training in the careful crafting of preparatory studies, composition, manipulation of perspective, and persuasive rendering of form. As in his earliest days, Jovanović took advantage of the opportunities available in Vienna. In this European cultural center he could study and copy some of the great masterworks of the past,5 while observing the new artistic directions not only in Vienna, but those transmitted from [End Page 36] Munich and Paris. These ranged from variations on Realism and Orientalism6 to Proto-Impressionism and Impressionism. For the first time, Jovanović was confronting an enticing cultural and artistic cornucopia. He seems to have taken advantage of the opportunities while applying himself diligently to his studies under the guidance of his professors at...

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