LONDON.- Three powerful works in Bonhams sale of Greek Art in London on 26th April highlight the importance of portraiture in the national artistic tradition. Entitled Winter (£120,000-180,000), Mother and Child (£30,000-50,000) and Portrait of Despina wearing a rose dress (£20,000-30,000) they were painted by one of the leading artists of the Thirties Generation, Yannis Tsarouchis.

Winter was painted in Paris in 1968 and forms part of the Four Seasons collection completed in 1969. Another work from the series – Autumn – was sold by Bonhams in April 2013 for more than £270,000. The imposing male figure at the centre of Winter can be seen as a symbol of the modern Greek spirit – a constant theme in Tsarouchis’s work. The painting demonstrates not only the artist’s deep knowledge of Greek mythology but also the influence of 17th and 18th century European Masters during his time in exile in France. For his left wing sympathies, Tsarouchis was forced to flee Greece in 1967 when the military seized power. He settled in Paris where he had studied as a young man and did not return to his homeland until after the collapse of the Junta in 1974.

Mother and Child shows another side to the artist’s vision of Greekness. This tender portrait was painted in 1936. The artist was in his mid-20s and his early mastery of realism had reached new heights. The allusion to the Madonna and Child of Byzantine iconography and the clear influence of the French master Henri Matisse combine to create a work at once timeless and modern.

In Portrait of Despina wearing a rose dress Tsarouchis matched his technical perfection as a draughtsman with his talent for revealing the essence of his sitters. Despina was the artist’s niece and this portrait, painted in Paris in the 1970s, was one of a number of depictions of her that Tsarouchis made during his exile. A similar portrait forms part of the collection of the Bank of Greece and Despina was the model for Spring, one of the companion pieces to Winter.

Olympia Pappa from the Bonhams Greek art department said, “In his portraits Tsarouchis drew on the many traditions and experiences which had shaped him as an artist and as a man. He strove not simply to depict a likeness of the sitter but also to capture – in his own words – ‘the divine part of the face’ and to relate the individual to the ideal of Greekness that was so central to his life and artistic output.”