“On the Balcony”
This beautiful oil on canvas study is by the Venezuelan artist, Cristóbal Rojas, from 1889, and is titled “On the Balcony (Estudio para el balcón)”.
At this point in his life, Rojas had been living and studying art in Paris for five years. He spent many hours at the Louvre familiarizing himself with a variety of art styles and spent some time exploring many of them. The homage to the Impressionism style in this piece is quite clear.
In the second half of 1889, Rojas had shifted the focus in his art from pieces that were more dramatic in nature to those that were more domestic; the same kinds of themes found in Impressionism paintings. He also used a lighter palette overall and focused on the filtered light as seen in Impressionism artworks. “On the Balcony” was made just one year before his untimely death at the age of 32. Soon after, Rojas would contract tuberculosis.
“On the Balcony” is currently in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Caracas, Venezuela.
For more on Cristóbal Rojas, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
