4. Child’s Head - Nicolae Tonitza
This painting is called Child’s Head and was created by Nicolae Tonitza around the year 1920. Since the artist did not note the date of completion of this work, it was estimated by specialists.
Tonitza, born in Bârlad in 1886, died in 1940 in Bucharest. He was one of the most sensitive Romanian painters of the 20th century. He also worked as a graphic artist, ceramist, and art critic, being deeply affected by the problems of the historical period in which he lived — a sensitivity that is reflected in the themes of his works. The technique used is oil on canvas. The painting is part of a series dedicated to children — a theme to which Tonitza was deeply artistically attached and through which he represented them in an atypical manner, capturing profound, sad, contemplative expressions. In Tonitza’s portraits, the child is not idealized but portrayed as a complex being, often reflecting the social realities of the time: poverty, isolation, and suffering.
Tonitza is one of the best-selling Romanian painters in history. At Artmark auctions, his works sell for over 100,000 euros.
The figure of the child is an almost obsessive presence throughout Tonitza’s entire body of work, especially beginning in the 1920s and continuing for the rest of his life. He was surrounded by children throughout his life — his own and those of his sisters, who were widowed after the First World War, with Tonitza supporting them as if they were his own.
In this painting, a child is depicted in profile, from the waist up. The portrait is placed diagonally, starting from the upper left and continuing toward the lower right. The background of the work is empty, without objects or decoration, and has a matte texture.
The profile follows the outline of the face: rounded forehead, small nose, slightly parted lips, rounded chin. The features are rendered simply, with a curved, clear, and expressive line. The skin is marked by the smoothest texture, which can be felt across the entire surface of the face. Being painted in profile, the human figure can be seen only halfway. The eye is the central element. Tonitza painted the child’s eye as a large, black dot. The gaze is directed downward, toward the lower left corner, suggesting a moment of calm or introspection. This detail conveys the emotion typical of his style — a melancholic fragility, but also a quiet form of maturity. The large, dark eyes of Tonitza’s characters are the unmistakable hallmark of his style.
The character wears a white headscarf, represented with a fine texture, tied at the back and decorated with dots, which can be felt under the fingers as oval-shaped spots with a rough texture — the roughest texture in the entire painting. The headscarf suggests that the subject of the painting is a little girl. From beneath the scarf emerge a few strands of hair that cover her ear and part of her neck. These details can be felt as fine, curved, slightly raised lines.
The girl is dressed in a white traditional blouse called „ie”, which has a smooth texture, similar to that of the headscarf. Over the blouse, she wears a red vest with a rough texture, meant to imitate the material it was made from, which appears to be wool. The differences in texture help the viewer understand the layering of the clothing.
In the upper right corner of the tactile panel, the original signature of the painter, Tonitza, is represented through fluid lines.
“In art, form is never perfect in itself, but through what it manages to express.”
~ Nicolae Tonitza