This is the testimony of a painter for whom art means revelation, experience, not skill or contrivance. Grigorescu’s paintings have life, because life is what inspired them. In a practical format, easy to browse, the album includes a generous number of illustrations, some of them unknown to the public, being at the first appearance in print. The biographical text accompanying them follows the interweaving of the artistic activity and the most important moments of Nicolae Grigorescu’s life. Through quotations, the artist’s voice almost always accompanies the story, turning it often into confession. And there are also the comments of those who knew and admired him, the pen of the critics or art historians over the years.

Summary:
"A plastically embodied emotion"
Master Nicu (1838-1861)
"I am a peasant’s son and proud of it"
Apprenticeship
The little "big" iconographer
The charm of distance
Church painter
Journey in search of "colour" (1861-1877)
Towards Paris, to study
Entrance to the forest of Fontainebleau
Experience of impressionism
Fellow Latin countries
First exhibitions at home – a controversial artist
Reporter with a brush (1877-1878)
An artist in the line of fire
War in Grigorescu’s colours
Disappointment and creation (1878-1887)
Alienation. Refuge in Vitre
Poetry of the female face
Last season (1887-1907)
Chronology
Bibliography