Portrait of an Old Man

Together with the two-years-older Vlaho Bukovac, Mato Celestin Medović (1857 - 1920) is the founder of Croatian modern painting, and one of its most highly valued representatives. Medović is the first of the modern Croatian painters to have emancipated still life as a freestanding subject, which also goes for landscape, which he mainly painted on Pelješac, in plein air, with a bright scale of pure colors. This new visual expression was transferred also to the historical compositions, to paintings with religious subjects and portraits.