Sunday

By the simple grouping of figures in a scene of some reduced Mediterranean exterior, Job achieved a composition which seems completely natural, unaffected and, at the same time, dynamic. The painter added two men to the three couples preoccupied with erotic games, thus enhancing the effects of pleasure: one is playing the accordion, while the other is drinking wine from a bottle. The figures are placed around a white tablecloth with fruit, which is laid out on the ground, between the legs of the women, who are sitting in the men’s laps. This seemingly unimportant detail could be interpreted as a free quote, a kind of a paraphrase of the famous painting by Édouard Manet. One can immediately notice the way in which Ignjat Job managed to compress the scene, obviously in order to enhance the general impression. His figures have unusual proportions compared to the scant signs of the landscape in which they are situated. And indeed, the considerably large figures have pushed out the space in which they are situated and have imposed themselves as the only constituents of the painting. Their movements, enhanced by numerous wavy lines and turbulent brushstrokes, lend the painting as a whole an extraordinary dynamic quality, creating associations with sound effects which can be inferred from the scene. Placing this painting by Job into the context of Croatian painting from the 1930s, Gamulin compares it to similar scenes painted by Juraj Plančić at the time. This comparison leads us to another, much broader context, and that is the painting of “poeticized sensuality of the dixhuitième.” Indeed, Job’s scene of some common people’s dissolute celebration on Brač in the early 1930s could be seen as a free interpretation of famous and equally lascivious rococo themes that Plančić refers to, so that Sunday, as well as several similar paintings by Job, painted on the island of Brač at that time, could be interpreted not only as a quick, brief record of a concrete motif, but also as his reliance on the historic paintings from the late eighteenth century (in France), as well as their free paraphrase and transfer into the local colour of the distinctly rustic island of Brač.