Nicholaos Gysis

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Nicholaos Gysis (1842-1901) is considered one of Greece's most important nineteenth century painters and and is most famous for his work Eros and the Painter: his first genre painting, recently auctioned at Bonham's in London and last exhibited in Greece in 1928.

He came from Tinos and studied in Athens, at the School of Arts.

In 1865, having won a scholarship, he went to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where he settled for the rest of his life. He was very soon incorporated into the German pictorial climate, and became one of its most characteristic representatives. This is expressed in the painting News of Victory of 1871, which deals with the Franco-Prussian War, and the painting Apotheosis i Thriamvos tis Vavarias (Apotheosis or Triumph of Bavaria).

From 1886 onward he was professor at the Academy of Munich, and gradually turned from the detailed realistic depictions towards compositions of a singularly impressionistic character. At the beginning of the 1870s returned to Greece for a period of several years, after which he produced a sequence paintings with more avowedly Greek themes, such as the Carnival at Athens and the Arravoniasmata [Engagement Ceremony] and a little later the painting After the destruction of Psara. Towards the end of his life, in the 1890s, he took a turn toward more religious themes, with his best known work of the later period being Triumph of Religion.