Iakovos Rizos

Iakovos Rizos or Iacovos Rizos (Greek: Ιάκωβος Ρίζος), also known as Jacques Rizo,[1] (1849 – 1926) was a Greek painter who worked primarily in Paris.

Athenian Evening or On the Terrace, 1897

Biography

Rizos was born in Athens; he was the grandson of Iakovos Rizos Neroulos and his brother was a civil engineer.[2] He went to Paris as a young man, studied with Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux Arts,[2][3] and spent his career there. He died there in 1926.[4]

Rizos was a friend of Renoir and associated with the Impressionists, and much admired Degas' work after he first moved to Paris, but his own style was academic.[3][4] Many of his paintings portray elegantly dressed women; he less often painted landscapes, in an Impressionist-influenced style.[3] He exhibited a number of times at the Paris salons, beginning with a portrait of his sister, Mrs. Paparrigopoulos, which he re-worked for the 1878 Paris exposition.[2] In 1875 his portrait of "Miss R." in a black silk dress with violet sleeves was noted by one critic as one of the finest portraits in the show.[5] In 1877 his Indolence, a nude, was praised by one critic except for the execution of the head,[6] and by another praised for the colouration but faulted for the drawing, particularly of the hands and feet.[7]

Rizos' Athenian Evening or On the Terrace of 1897 won a silver medal at the 1900 Paris exposition and was praised at the 1899 art exhibition in Athens.[3] It depicts an officer talking to two women on a terrace at sunset, with the Acropolis in the background, in contrast to the more common depictions of Greece in 19th-century painting that focus on rural life.[8] It is a noted example of the juxtaposition of sophisticated urban life with the country's past grandeur, which was a theme of Greek artists in the late 19th and 20th centuries.[9][10] It and a number of his other paintings are in the Coutlides Collection at the National Gallery of Greece;[3] there are also several in private collections in both Athens and Paris.[4]

At the 1897 salon, Albert-Gustave Belleroche exhibited a portrait of Rizo.[11][12]

Gallery

• Paintings by Iakovos Rizos
• 
  Lady in the Garden with her Dog (1885–1890)
• 
  The Artist's Sister Reading (1885–1890)
• 
  Female Nude, c. (1849–1926)

References

1. Dōra Kominē-Dialetē, Lexiko ellēnōn kallitechnōn: zōgrafoi, gluptes, charaktes, 16os-20os aiōnas Volume 4 Pat–Ō, Kallitechnikē bibliothēkē, Athens: Melissa, 2000, ISBN 9789602042267, p. 99 (in Greek).
2. Clovis Lamarre and Marquis de Queux de St.-Hilaire, La Grèce et l'Exposition de 1878, Pays étrangers et l'Exposition de 1878, Paris: Delagrave, 1878, OCLC 24508789, pp. 153–54 (in French).
3. Ρίζος Ιάκωβος (1849 Αθήνα - 1926 Παρίσι) Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine, National Gallery of Greece (in Greek).
4. Andreas Spyridōnos Iōannou, tr. D. Dellagrammatika, Greek painting, 19th century, Athens: Melissa, 1974, OCLC 5946277, p. 238.
5. Anatole de Montaiglon and Louis Gonse,Salon de 1875, Peinture et Sculpture, Aquarelles, Dessins et Gravures, from Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1875, OCLC 26197893, p. 9 (in French).
6. Le Courier Littéraire, 25 May 1877, p. 274 (in French).
7. Henry Houssaye, L'art français depuis dix ans, Paris: Didier, 1882, OCLC 458126895, p. 98 (in French).
8. Richard Stoneman, A Luminous Land: Artists Discover Greece, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998, ISBN 978-0-89236-467-1, p. 50.
9. Four painters of 20th century Greece: Theophilos, Kontoglou, Ghika, Tsarouchis, exhibition catalogue, London: Wildenstein, 1975, OCLC 2753606, p. 14.
10. Mary Greensted, "The Arts and Crafts Movement: exchanges between Greece and Britain (1876–1930)", MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham, n.d., p. 31 (pdf).
11. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, dessins, modèles: Salon de 1897, p.  11 (in French).
12. L'Illustration 109 (1897) 307 (in French).

External links

• Media related to Iakovos Rizos at Wikimedia Commons