Museum of Paja Jovanović

In 1969, this representative premises was reshaped after the model of Paja Jovanović’s luxurious studio in Vienna, used by the artist between 1895 and 1938. In accordance with his reputation as a painter and his collector’s passion, Paja Jovanović furnished his Viennese studio with sumptuous pieces of 18th-century furniture, a crystal mirror, bronze sculptures by French artists and luxurious applied art objects.

The greatest part of them have been included in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Paja Jovanović, which attracts visitors by its spirit of authenticity, atmosphere and beautiful paintings in vivid colors. Paja Jovanović’s unsurpassable talent and hard work yielded paintings with a harmonious, somewhat static composition, rendered with greater ease in his sketches.

The museum holdings include 211 works (paintings, drawings and photographs) of Paja Jovanović dating from throughout his career. The paintings are divided into four categories: landscapes, portraits, history paintings and nudes. Peculiar details were Jovanović’s specialty and he often accentuated them, adding thus a new dimension to his paintings. His personal belongings make an important part of the Museum’s collection.

Oak-framed wall panelling with Louis XVI ornaments is a remarkable feature in the drawing room reconstructed on the model of the painter’s Viennese studio. Many a client was seated in a piece of furniture from the drawing room set while sitting for a portrait, and this can be clearly noticed in several paintings exhibited at the Museum of Paja Jovanović.

It is not known when Paja Jovanović (Vršac, 1859 – Vienna, 1957) first visited Belgrade. It is reasonable to guess that it might have happened during his visits to the hometown, Vršac, or on his travels to the southern pars of Serbia in the closing decades of the 19th century.

Although he never spent much time in Belgrade due to his painting commitments all over the globe, it remained a place to which he eagerly returned. Paja Jovanović started a correspondence with the officials of the Belgrade City Museum about establishing his legacy in Belgrade in 1950.

He wanted to bequeath to the City the pieces of his work and items of his painting equipment that he considered “worth preserving”, so that a studio could be set up – the master’s room attracting those who would like to learn something more about him and his art.

The representative portrait was painted after the wedding of Princess Maria Hohenzollern (1900–1961), daughter of the Romanian King Ferdinand I (1865–1927), and King Alexander Karađorđević (1888–1934), in 1922. Queen Marija Karađorđević is presented in a long muslin dress and an overcoat with a fur collar. She is wearing a diadem of precious stones on her head and a long string of pearls around her neck. The Queen is sitting in an armchair that was part of the inventory of Jovanović's studio in Vienna.

A Nude on the Red Cloak is part of a monumental triptych (three-part composition) which consists of two nudes and one portrait of the painter's wife Hermina Dauber Jovanović Mouni. Mouni is presented in an armchair from the painter's Viennese studio, on a bright red drapery. There is a metal tray with glass bottles and a lemon on the right side of the model. This nude is considered the "most colorful" in the work of Paja Jovanović.

The painting shows the interior of the mill in brown tones. The study was created in the first half of the 19th century during the painter's travels in the Southern Balkans. At that time, Paja Jovanović painted numerous details of the furniture of rural households, which then appeared as part of genre compositions from the life of the people in the Balkans.

Flowers from (cc.) 1950 is considered to be the last or one of the last paintings by Paja Jovanović. Flowers in a vase is a motif that the artist painted in his late period, mainly during the Second World War. Depictions of still life were not so often present in Paja Jovanović's painting opus. They are mainly related to the segment of the artist's "private" painting, which was not intended for public display, but was created in the studio and for the studio.

In the Portrait of a Young Woman in a Pink Dress, it is possible to recognize the painter's wife and favorite model Hermina Dauber Jovanović Mouni, who poses in the interior of the artist's Viennese studio. Mouni is presented in a gorgeous dress as a lady from high society. Her beauty is especially emphasized by the harmonious proportions of the body, arms and neck, as well as the decoration in the form of a yellow rose, the artist's favorite flower and the frequent motif on portraits of women.