IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 509

BETI ŽEROVC
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Ivana Kobilca – a Career in the Context

of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Painting

T
he present article on the artist Ivana Kobilca1 (b. Ljubljana, 1861; d. Ljubljana,
1926) developed from thinking about her painting Slovenija se klanja Ljubljani
[Slovenia Bows to Ljubljana] (1898-1903), which has hung in the main chamber of
Ljubljana’s Town Hall for over a hundred years. The painting as a large and important
public commission to a woman painter in the late nineteenth century provoked active
examination of Kobilca’s development as professional visual artists that made her suitable
for such tasks. In the essay we read that Kobilca was no longer forced into a kind of semi-
amateur practice, but was instead able to receive the necessary training, establish herself
as a serious artist, and work hard to reach a high level of quality with first-rate work, which
also guaranteed her a place in the important art exhibitions of the time – including, for
example, the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where, at the age of
twenty-nine, she even received an award. Having thus so clearly surpassed her Slovene
male colleagues from the Austrian province of Carniola, Kobilca was the logical choice to
receive large public commissions in the provincial capital, Ljubljana.

Ivana Kobilca in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Painting

The nineteenth century was a time of enormous change in the sphere of art, not only in
the kind of art that was being produced but also in the art system and the (pre-)formation of
the artist’s status. These changes were connected with the drastic change happening in the
general society, notably, the rapid growth of the middle class and the rapid expansion of
the free market, which art too now became part of, moving away from its traditional feu-
dal/patronage relationships. People from the wealthy middle class were becoming the key
1 I should explain right away that Ivana Kobilca has not been very well studied. A particular problem is the lack of
research on the period she lived outside of Slovenia, which accounts for more than thirty of her most active years. The
basis for articles about her are, primarily, press reports and other sources, as well as that part of her work located in
Slovenia; the recollections she related in her old age; and, above all, the vast collection of her posthumous papers, which
are in private hands. One of the most trustworthy articles on the painter is Silva TRDINA, “Ivana Kobilca”, Zbornik za
umetnostno zgodovino, new series 2 (1952): 93-114, which was written in 1940. Trdina was a good friend of Kobilca’s
niece, Mira Pintar, and presumably wrote the article at her request and with her assistance. Because it is very much fact-
based, it is also less burdened by the demands of the time in which it was written. Articles about the painter, right up to
today, have too often been heavily encumbered by an over-anxious search for modernistic tendencies in Kobilca’s work
and annoyance that there are not enough of them.
510 BETI ŽEROVC

purchasers of art, decorating their homes with artworks with specific themes and formats
adapted to their own tastes, while the artists themselves were also now being recruited
from this same social stratum. The attraction of being an artist was becoming greater and
was less confined to one gender. But at the same time, the nineteenth century – which
substantially brought an end to the traditional guild system and workshop training and
established painting as an elective independent profession that required an academic edu-
cation – was hardly conducive to the education of women. In short, the more institutiona-
lized artistic training became, the fewer exceptions it allowed; thus, women were excluded
quite systematically. Universities proscribed women’s enrolment statutorily, declared the-
ir secondary education inadequate for university enrolment, or took similar measures to
keep women out. Such were the norms, which began to give way in Europe only toward
the end of the century, although in most cases they remained in place right up to the First
World War.
Interestingly, the growing importance of the capitalist free market brought certain be-
nefits to women. For example, the clearly expressed desire to study painting on the part of
many economically well-off middle-class girls led over time to the creation of a large
number of private women’s schools and academies (in addition to the established institu-
tions for men), where such girls could receive an education of increasingly high quality.
Thus, while the number of women painters was growing throughout the nineteenth
century, their social composition was substantially different in comparison with earlier
periods. Female artists were no longer a kind of “hidden reserve” in the family business,
but more and more consisted of daughters from wealthy middle-class and aristocratic fa-
milies. Such families, first of all, provided their daughters (though perhaps not always
willingly) with enough of an education and emancipatory upbringing to possess the neces-
sary will and determination to persist in their decision to study painting. Second, such
families were then also able to bear the financial costs of this decision – the demanding
burden of years of very expensive education. (Women’s painting schools usually asked a
much higher tuition than men’s schools.) So we should not be surprised to find that the
most famous female artists of the day came from wealthy families: Mary Cassatt (1845-
1926), for instance, came from a very rich American banking and stockbroking family;
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was the daughter of a French prefect (the head of one of the
country’s administrative regions); while the father of Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-
1907) was a civil engineer and supervisor for the German railways and her mother came
from the aristocracy.
This changed social composition is very likely one of the reasons why, in contrast to
earlier centuries when women artists tended to remain anonymous, nineteenth-century
women artists began to be actively inscribed in art history. These were the first generations
of women who began to earn a more serious place for themselves in the national artistic
pantheons. In recent decades, with the multicultural widening of the art-historical gaze to
include smaller nations, it has become clear that in the late nineteenth century, in addition
to the women before mentioned, who early became part of the artistic canon, there were
high-calibre, distinguished women painters almost everywhere, perhaps even more de-
monstrably in peripheral countries far from the major art centres. The Scandinavians Kitty
L. Kielland (1843-1914), Harriet Backer (1845-1932), and Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-
1932) and the Serb Nadežda Petroviæ (1873-1915) were in fact among the leading figures
in the visual art of their countries and not some marginal phenomenon displayed more as
an embellishment or curiosity.
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 511

1. Ivana Kobilca, Slovenia Bows to Ljubljana, 1898-1903, oil on canvas, 146×262 cm,
Municipality of Ljubljana (Town Hall, Main Council Chamber), Museum and Galleries
of Ljubljana, Documentation, EG0002853. Photograph by Matevž Paternoster
© Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana.

Where, then, do we find Ivana Kobilca in this context? As the daughter of retail mer-
chants in Ljubljana, Kobilca was able to enjoy a good education. Along with receiving her
primary education from the Ursuline sisters, she had private lessons in French and Italian,
among other things. She also attended a private art class twice a week. When she was
sixteen, her father took her with him to Vienna to see more of the world – surely further
evidence that the Kobilcas wished to raise their daughter as a well-rounded and confident
young lady.
Perhaps it is because Ivana Kobilca was not inclined to grouse or complain in public
that we know nothing at all about the effort needed to persuade her family to let her study
far from home, although it is unlikely such a decision could have been made without their
persuasion. But however it happened, the eighteen-year-old Kobilca was ultimately allo-
wed to go alone to Vienna to study in 1880(?), and to do so with the blessing and sufficient
financial support of her family.
We can assume that Kobilca’s training as a painter was a fairly typical picture of the
difficulties young women faced in getting an education – difficulties that, again, she clear-
ly overcame, although almost certainly not without a little luck.
At first she simply copied works in museums, as she would have had no more concrete
idea about how to even begin studying painting. In Vienna, it seems, she soon realized that
the most stimulating environment for an aspiring painter was in Munich. So in the autumn
of 1881, Kobilca went to Bavaria, where initially and quite inappropriately (from not kno-
wing any better, she later said) she enrolled in a school for applied art. Eventually, howe-
ver, through acquaintances she had made on her own, the artist learned about Alois
Erdtelt’s well-respected painting school and, with letters of recommendation, enrolled
there in 1882(?). According to her own account, she stayed there for several years, combi-
ning Erdtelt’s instruction with life-drawing classes taught by “Roth the sculptor”. This tra-
ining appears to have been crucial for Kobilca, not only by giving her a formal education but
512 BETI ŽEROVC

2. Ivana Kobilca (?), Female Nude, photograph, 17.8×13 cm, National

Gallery of Slovenia, NG F 82. © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

also by providing her with a circle of friends, with whom she remained in close touch even
after leaving Munich.
The only additional later training Kobilca mentions occurred in the early 1890s in Pa-
ris, when she enrolled in Henri Gervex’s famous school, but she was there only one and a
half months. She and Gervex did not get along at all, nor did she like the saccharine and
moralizing atmosphere among the students at his school.2
2 The information on Kobilca’s education is taken from Stanko VURNIK, “Ivana Kobilca: Spomini”, Zbornik za umet-
nostno zgodovino 3, nos. 3-4 (1923): 101-103, 107; and TRDINA, “Ivana Kobilca”, 93-95. The sculptor whom Kobilca
mentions is probably Johann Christoph Roth (as Mateja Mauèec suggested in a conversation with the author). For
a general discussion of educational and career opportunities for women artists in Austria-Hungary, see Sabine PLAKOLM-
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 513

3. Ivana Kobilca (?), motif for the painting Slovenia Bows to Ljubljana
(girl with wreath), photograph; private ownership.

Regardless of the complications involved, this was clearly a time when a young woman
in Carniola – that is, in an Austrian province far from any art centres – could obtain her
parents’ consent to study painting and then find and receive the kind of real training that
would place her on an equal level with her male colleagues. In an international context,
Kobilca’s education, although very good, was perhaps nothing special; among her Slove-
ne colleagues, however, the kind of training that by its end resulted in such works as The

FORSTHUBER, Künstlerinnen in Österreich 1897-1938: Malerei, Plastik, Architektur (Vienna: Picus, 1994), 9-65.
For an example of a successful female painter’s career path and exhibition achievements in Austria, see Bärbel HO-
LAUS, “Olga Wisinger Florian – Weibliches Talent mit ‘…riesiger männlicher Energie’”, Stimmungsimpressionismus,
ed. Gerbert FRODL and Verena TRÄGER (Vienna: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, 2004), 289-299.
514 BETI ŽEROVC

Coffee Drinker, Ironers, or Summer can only be seen as superior. The painter’s self-confi-
dence at the time can also be considered above the norm: soon after concluding her stu-
dies, Kobilca made every effort to win commissions for painting the ceiling of Ljubljana’s
new theatre (today’s Slovene National Theatre for Opera and Ballet) and, in the mid-
1890s, for (part of) the art decoration in the city’s new National House (Narodni dom).3

Ivana Kobilca in the Context of the Nineteenth-Century Art System

So many and such high-calibre possibilities in art education for women could develop
because, among other things, education was merely one of the components in the making
of a professional painting career in that period and there were other components that pro-
ved more open to women. The art market did not, in principle, care very much whose
works it was selling, while the press, similarly, was not all that interested in which gender
was being written about; as for the mechanisms of exhibiting, if they were not entirely
favourable to women, they were in any case much less discriminatory than the official
education system.
In short, artists in Kobilca’s time found themselves in what was essentially an early
form of the art system as we know it today, where what matters is not only a solid know-
ledge of the craft but also a number of other factors, including a good understanding of the
workings of the system itself and one’s own position and chances within it. In comparison
with the way the art system worked in earlier times, the central change was, in fact, a new
concentration on ambitious exhibiting, for this had become the key to an artist’s success.
Under the conditions of the nineteenth century, where in place of a few aristocratic and
ecclesiastical clients art suddenly had a much broader and very interested wealthy middle-
class public – and with it, of course, also new and much expanded opportunities for ma-
king money – the leading type of artist soon became the one who communicated with his
(or her) customers through exhibitions. Large numbers of the wealthy middle class were
prepared to pay the entrance fees for exhibitions and there purchase both the more expen-
sive oil paintings and the cheaper prints, which for this reason were all the more intensely
distributed in mass numbers. Several other factors, too, supported the regular exhibiting of
one’s work as a wise alternative to business dealings. Among other things, reporting on
exhibitions and art criticism were becoming ever more widespread: with the exceptionally
rapid growth of newspapers and magazines and the similarly rapid expansion of exhibi-
tions, art reporting and art criticism had an ever greater amount of work as well ever
greater opportunities to sharpen their profiles as disciplines. Despite the fact that artists,
merchants, the public, and critics – all mutually entangled in the process of presenting art
– were even then at odds with each other, success in exhibitions was becoming an absolute
standard, which from that time forward was used both by the purchasers of already-made
artwork and by the patrons and commissioners of new work.4 Doing business on the free
market, meanwhile, also required artists to adopt an entirely new form of behaviour and a
new marketing strategy, for they now found themselves in the situation of being constantly
3 See notes from letters by Fani Kobilca (the painter’s sister) and a letter by Karel(?) vitez Bleiweis-Trsteniški, dated 7
Aug. 1895, in Kobilca’s posthumous papers (private ownership). A notice about the painter’s offer to produce a work
for the National House even for no fee was published 30 June 1894 in the newspaper Slovenski narod (see also TRDI-
NA, “Ivana Kobilca”, 101).
4 Oskar BÄTSCHMANN, The Artist in the Modern World: The Conflict between Market and Self-Expression, tr. Eileen

Martin (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1998), 9.

 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 515

4. Ivana Kobilca, The Coffee Drinker, (1888), oil on canvas, 100×70 cm, private ownership.
Photograph by Bojan Salaj © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
516 BETI ŽEROVC

5. Photograph of the installation of the first solo exhibition of Ivana Kobilca

at the “Realka” polytechnic secondary school in Ljubljana,
15-22 December 1889, National Gallery of Slovenia Photography Archive.
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

in public competition with their many colleagues. As Oskar Bätschmann has noted: “To
be successful, the exhibition artist had to be the subject of public discussion, had to find
access to the media and project an interesting image to accompany his works.” 5
Let us note further that in this period new and different kinds of exhibitions began
developing, while older institutions largely had to transform themselves to adapt to the
new conditions. Even the salons and similar, officially disinterested, state or local exhibi-
tions of the top artists found themselves in a new role: they were of much more crucial
significance for the artists they exhibited, and they began functioning, for both artists and
the public/potential buyers, as giant advertising displays of “officially” approved mer-
chandise. For the artists, showing work at such exhibitions was no longer, as it had once
been, merely an annoying, legally imposed obligation without any special impact on their
income or career; it was now a necessity for their survival and their best strategy for pro-
fessional advancement. Understandably, this meant ever fiercer battles between artists
over salon exhibitions and their participation in them. We can speak of a similar situation
everywhere in Europe, especially, of course, where major art centres were developing: not
only in Paris, but also, for example, in Munich and Vienna.
Under such a system, young artists had to prove themselves as soon as possible as first-
rate, recognizable exhibitors in large group shows. Here, all beginners took the same ro-
ute: they first had to convince a jury to let them into a show; then their works had to attract
as much attention in the show as possible. This attention, reflected in the greatest possible
reaction in the press, would consequently bring the top artists both fame and income.
Success in exhibitions could sometimes be enough for great fame and good sales in the art
centres, or if it was not, and if the artist came from someplace else, then a prominent

5 BÄTSCHMANN, The Artist in the Modern World, 10.

 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 517

international endorsement of this sort could well be “cashed in” in the artist’s local area,
which responded with purchases and commissions.
Here we have roughly outlined the system in which Ivana Kobilca, too, established
herself and functioned in the nineteenth century, and in this framework we will now exa-
mine the course of her career.
Even with Kobilca’s artistic orientation, we can say it was not simply about what the
young artist liked to paint but was also based on what she saw as work that could potential-
ly bring her success in exhibitions. Pictures like The Coffee Drinker, Summer, Ironers, and
Children in the Grass are, after all, hardly the result of an inspiration of the moment;
rather, they are carefully arranged and constructed pieces for competitive exhibitions and
also required a very real investment of money, time, organization, and, in particular, a
great deal of basic preliminary thinking about “what” would be painted and “how”. We
must remember that when a young painter decided to make a potential exhibition painting,
that intent essentially defined the kind of painting it would be. The artist would have to
consider not only her abilities and interests but also the demands of the setting in which
the painting would be shown and which it would have to satisfy in order to be compelling
and notable. Young artists, therefore, not only worked hard to improve their painting skills;
they also paid particular attention to the current exhibitions and followed what was being
written about in the press. If you wanted to exhibit your work, you had to satisfy the jury,
so you would try to conform your work with what usually had the greatest success in
exhibitions and especially with the jury’s previous selections.
Given the conditions in Munich in the 1880s and Kobilca’s youth, her choice of an
artistic orientation is largely unsurprising. More or less typically for the time, it represen-
ted a move away from the established versions of Munich realism and toward its newest
version, namely, naturalism – a move toward paintings with a brighter palette, a plein-air
approach, with strong light in the image, and so on. This trend had proved successful in
shows in the early 1880s, where it had caused a storm because it was so different; along
with criticism, however, it also, reaped a great deal of loud enthusiasm and many awards.
In her work for exhibitions, Kobilca clearly relied on both German and French models.
She was strongly influenced by the paintings of her famous Munich acquaintance, Fritz von
Uhde, but from her own statements we also know how much she admired the work of the
most prominent representative of modern naturalism at the time, Jules Bastien-Lepage.6 In
addition to these two champions, Kobilca also had an entire range of less prominent ma-
sters available to her; among other things, such painting could be seen not only in exhibi-
tions but also in magazines. Variations of painting styles with a naturalistic, almost
hyper-realistic note – which could veer toward very free treatments in parts of picture
depicting direct sunlight or in unaccentuated parts – were also being successfully cultiva-
ted by a number of painters in Bavaria who had established themselves in the 1860s,
including some of the artists in the group we know as the Leibl Circle.7
6 See VURNIK, “Ivana Kobilca: Spomini”, 107. In the 1880s, Bastien-Lepage was a frequent and very popular exhibitor

in Munich. For more on the subject, see Gabriel P. WEISBERG, Beyond Impressionism: The Naturalist Impulse (New
York: H. N. Abrams, 1992), 172 and elsewhere in passing.
7 At the time Kobilca was painting Summer, Wilhelm Leibl’s close friend, the less-known painter Johannes Sperl, might

well have been interesting to her, with his pictures of gardens often populated by little children playing together and
picking wildflowers or weaving wreaths out of them. See Werner MORITZ, J. Sperl 1840-1914 (Rosenheim: Rosenhe-
imer Verlagshaus, 1990). She could have found high-quality responses to Bastien-Lepage in Austrian painting, too: for
instance, in the works of Wilhelm Bernatzik. See Karlheinz BRUNHUBER, “Wilhelm Bernatzik, ein Maler der Klimt-
gruppe” (diploma thesis, Institute of Art History, University of Vienna, 2003).
518 BETI ŽEROVC

6. Ivana Kobilca, Summer, 1889-1890, oil on canvas, 180×140 cm, National Gallery of
Slovenia, NG S 165. Photograph by Bojan Salaj © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 519

7-10. Ivana Kobilca, motifs for the painting Summer, (1889), photographs, 17.8×12.8 cm,
National Gallery of Slovenia, (variant A) NG F 72, (variant B) NG F 73, (variant C) NG F 74,
(variant D) NG F 75.
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
520 BETI ŽEROVC

11. Ivana Kobilca, Ironers, (1890), oil on canvas, 100×80 cm,

private ownership. Photograph by Bojan Salaj
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

What makes Kobilca exceptional among other Carniolan artists, however, is that not
only did she manage to find important progressive models, but she was also able to then
create a body of work that measured up to them. Summer, Ironers, and Children in the
Grass are paintings that in every respect – in their concept, form, and execution – rival
their models and meet their highest standards.
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 521

12. Ivana Kobilca, Children on the Grass, (1892), oil on canvas, 80×100 cm, private ownership.
Photograph by Bojan Salaj © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

Looking at Summer from this perspective, we see nothing at all in this large painting
that might suggest Kobilca’s many years of traditionalist training in the typical Munich
“brown gravy” style. Here, the painter has completely mastered the new plein-air style: the
painting is filled with the constant motion and flickering of nature in summer and the play
of light. Like its models, the picture is a characteristic mix in which certain parts are
deliberately detailed and “hyper-realistic” while in other parts light softens the surface and
creates a different sort of happening. The painter was able to observe carefully what was
seen, employ various difficult methods of construction and depiction to bring it into the
painting, and while doing so maintain the standards of fashion as to what sort of treatment
suited which parts of the painting.8
But without spending more time now on Kobilca’s specific works and their models, let
us continue with the main points relating to our basic topic. After Kobilca’s successful
choice of an artistic orientation and the high quality of her work, the third element we wish
to underscore is the painter’s ability to place her artworks successfully “in circulation” by
offering them for exhibition in the right places. She understood that in the art business
8 Such works might well have taken months to complete; in her memoirs, Kobilca says she painted Summer in Upper-
Carniola over the course of two summers (VURNIK, “Ivana Kobilca: Spomini”, 104). Also, a number of photographs
have been preserved that were obviously made as part of her work process for the painting. For more on such methods,
see WEISBERG, Beyond Impressionism, 28-47.
522 BETI ŽEROVC

13. Ivana Kobilca, Parisian Girl Selling Vegetables, (1892), oil on canvas, 82×60 cm,
National Gallery of Slovenia, NG S 164. Photograph by Bojan Salaj
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 523

14. Ivana Kobilca, Boy in Sailor Suit, (1892), oil on canvas, 90×67 cm,
National Gallery of Slovenia, NG S 1871. Photograph by Bojan Salaj
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana
524 BETI ŽEROVC

finished pictures were only a beginning of sorts, so she worked hard to make sure her work
was shown as widely as possible.
With the young Kobilca, we see two models in particular for presenting artwork. She
tried to work actively as an exhibitor in large group shows: from the late 1880s on, her
paintings were shown in a number of important exhibitions throughout Europe every year.
At the same time, she also pursued solo exhibiting and, as early as 1889, boldly organized
a large monographic exhibition in Ljubljana, and again in Zagreb in 1890. Self-produced
exhibitions by painters were extremely rare in Carniola, let alone ones that were well
organized, received good press coverage, and later travelled to nearby Zagreb; Kobilca’s
show, then, represented an extraordinary feat of exhibition-making for the Slovene art
scene of the time.9
A year later, Kobilca decided to try to exhibit her works in the then-art capital of the
world and sent the paintings Summer and Ironers to the Salon de la Société Nationale des
Beaux-Arts in Paris. What happened next is a story Slovenes know well: not only were the
paintings chosen for the Salon amid a very fierce competition, but the artist, barely twenty-
nine years old at the time, was even one of the prize-winners, who in 1891 became asso-
ciate members of the fine arts society. Kobilca was living in Paris, intermittently, in
1891-1892, but we do not actually know how she reacted to her fame – we have too few
eyewitness accounts about this.10 What we do know is that she was the subject of a remar-
kable response in the press. Among her posthumous papers, for example, we find clip-
pings from French newspapers and magazines that reported on her award or chose to
reproduce her paintings; they include Le Siècle, Le Temps, Le Radical, Journal des débats,
La France, Le Journal des arts, Le Journal illustré, La Revue des beaux-arts, and L’Illu-
stration.11
After her success in Paris, Kobilca continued to exhibit extensively; among other
things, she and Ferdo Vesel were the first Slovenes to participate in the Venice Biennale, in
1897 (this was the second Biennale). Their work was shown in the Austrian section, with
Kobilca represented by a painting titled Portrait of J. K. – most likely her own self-portrait
from the mid-1890s. When constructing an artistic career, it is no small thing to be perso-
nally associated with the “big names” in the field, so it is worth mentioning that Kobilca
was able to win the friendship, or at least the close acquaintance, of certain key figures in
9 Although Ivana Kobilca’s exhibiting history has been very poorly researched and our conclusions about it are based
primarily on evidence from her posthumous papers (letters, clippings, etc.), we can nevertheless, it seems, outline the
amplitude of her international exhibiting career – its rise, peak, and decline. See Vatroslav HOLZ, “Ivana Kobilca in nje
slike”, Ljubljanski zvon 10, no. 1 (1890), 56; and Polonca VRHUNC’s contributions in the exhibition catalogue Ivana
Kobilca: 1861-1926 (Ljubljana: Narodna galerija, 1979): “Življenje in delo Ivane Kobilce” (13-29), “Razstave” (81-
84), “Literatura o umetnici” (86-107), and “Katalog razstavljenih del” (115-161). In Kobilca’s Sarajevo period, there are
references to her exhibiting with the Sarajevo Painters’ Club (see nn. 18 and 20 below). The painter also mentioned
exhibiting at the Schulte Salon when she lived in Berlin (VURNIK, “Ivana Kobilca: Spomini”, 111). So, along with the
kinds of exhibitions mentioned in the article, we should note, too, that Kobilca also exhibited as part of an art group and
in commercial galleries.
10 See, for example, Ulrike WOLFF-THOMSEN, ed., Die Pariser Bohème (1889-1895): Ein autobiographischer Be-

richt der Malerin Rosa Pfäffinger (Kiel: Ludwig, 2007), 46-47.

11 Although at that time in Paris group exhibitions were already highly stratified, two shows came in for especially

important attention (to put it simply): the old salon organized by the Société des Artistes Français and the recently
established Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where the more progressive painters were presented. In 1891,
Kobilca’s two paintings would have (still) been entirely up to date, if we consider that paintings such as Pascal Dagnan-
Bouveret’s Conscripts or Jules-Alexis Muenier’s The Catechism Lesson (both shown at the salon at the time) received
a great deal of notice by the press (WEISBERG, Beyond Impressionism, 76-80).
IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 525

15. Ivana Kobilca, Self-portrait, 1894-1895, oil on cardboard,

60.5×35.5 cm, private ownership. Photograph
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
526 BETI ŽEROVC

the Munich and Paris art scenes. In Bavaria this was, as mentioned, Fritz von Uhde, while
in France it was Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who was literally idolized at the time.12 We
can assume that, at least for a couple of years in Munich, Kobilca was generally recogni-
zed as one of the up-and-coming young artists of the day.
In the mid-1890s, we see significant changes in Kobilca’s life. The painter no longer
lived in a major Western art centre; she returned home to Carniola for a time, and then
lived in Sarajevo for several years. She was still exhibiting ambitiously, but was sending
mostly older works to the different shows. Mainly, however, we see a big change in Kobil-
ca’s ambitions as a painter: she was less likely to attempt any challenging exhibition for-
mats and was also less interested in artistic trends and new developments. At that time in
Central Europe, the newly formed Secessionist associations had, very quickly and widely,
started dictating the new trends, and artists had to incorporate them in their work if they
wanted to satisfy the exhibition criteria. When it came to modernizing her paintings with
various features that would give them the kind of “up-to-date” look standard in the 1890s,
Kobilca remained stuck somewhere near the beginning and soon fell out of the competi-
tion for the truly top-ranked exhibitions. The new painting methods, which ranged from
intensive dynamism in the very act of painting all the way to total stylization, as well as the
new subject matter, compositional arrangements, framing, cut-outs, and the like clearly
left Kobilca quite unimpressed. The quick and very successful developmental leaps she
had made from The Coffee Drinker to Summer and Ironers, and from there to Children on
the Grass, came to a halt by the mid-1890s.
Why such a break occurred in Kobilca’s career – in her painting practice, her exhibi-
ting, as well as in her life – we do not know, but it is very possible that, among other
adverse factors, she also went through a crisis that was entirely personal. After her Paris
period there is, indeed, a slight but troubling gap in Kobilca’s trail.13 The painter appears
to be in full form in 1897, at the time of her move to Sarajevo, but in Bosnia her entire way
of working changed and, it seems, her activities were increasingly dictated by a concern
for survival. She took on an extremely large number of various commissions, which pro-
bably meant, too, that she no longer had time to make exhibition pieces or be actively
involved in showing her works. In her style, too, the painter would have likely tried to
adapt to the demands of her clients and buyers, for in these circumstances she understood
her work, first and foremost, as the profession by which she earned a living, not as making
pretentious “competitive” paintings for exhibitions. By the same token – and on the basis
of contemporary accounts and the painter’s own correspondence – we can conclude that

12 In the past two decades, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes has been accorded a much more prominent place in art history than

previously. There have also been a number of more concrete studies of his influence on a truly large number of painters
in Europe and the United States. See, for example, the catalogue for a 2002 exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice:
Serge LEMOINE, ed., From Puvis de Chavannes to Matisse and Picasso. Toward Modern Art (London: Thames and
Hudson, 2002).
13 It is unlikely this “gap” occurred simply because the painter believed she had already established a flourishing

practice. Indeed, it seems that in 1895 she was extremely disappointed when her works were rejected by the Salon de la
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Also, at least in the early 1890s, she was still trying intensively to make
paintings that would be successful at exhibitions. See Puvis de Chavannes’s letter to Kobilca, dated 23 Jan. 1896 (in
private holdings), where he consoles her and tries to explain her rejection at the salon. On an earlier rejection at the
salon, in 1893, see WOLFF-THOMSEN, ed., Die Pariser Bohème, 126. We learn a great deal about Kobilca’s complex
relationship toward exhibiting – her ambitions in exhibiting and what kept her from realizing them – from her vast
correspondence over many years with her sister Marija (e.g. her extensive reflections in a letter dated 8 Jan. 1900; in
private holdings).
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 527

16. Ivana Kobilca, Portrait of Albina Arndt, ca. 1900, oil on canvas, 50×41 cm,
private ownership. Photograph: National Gallery of Slovenia Photography Archive
© National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
focused innovation was neither a priority for her nor part of her character. Certainly, howe-
ver, this break in her art did not happen because she was uninformed; among other things,
Kobilca had come into contact with the most avant-garde art of the time (Gauguin, Cézan-
ne, Van Gogh) in France, and with Austrian Secessionism in Sarajevo. 14
14For more on this, see the continuation of this article, which was published in 2013 in Radovi Instituta za povijest
umjetnosti (Zagreb). One of the four members of the Sarajevo Painters’ Club, to which Kobilca belonged, was Max
528 BETI ŽEROVC

17. Ivana Kobilca, Madonna Souvan, 1900, oil on canvas, 60×48 cm, private ownership.
Photograph by Janko Dermastja © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

In any case, Kobilca’s choices in this regard will always be difficult to explain in retro-
spect, and no matter how we try, it will not change the fact that the painter, after about ten
years, fell out of the top competitive ranks for international exhibitions, although she con-
tinued to show her work around Europe.

Liebenwein, who was himself part of the Vienna Secession group. See Lothar SCHULTES, ed., Maximilian Liebenwe-
in: Ein Maler zwischen Impressionismus und Jugendstil, exh. cat. (Linz: Oberösterreichische Landesmuseum, 2006).
Kobilca and Liebenwein discussed issues relating to exhibiting; see, for instance, his letter to Kobilca dated 2 Jan. 1906
(in private holdings).
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 529

18. Atelier Färber, Sarajevo (?), photograph of the altar painting by Ivana Kobilca,
Christ on the Mount of Olives, in the Evangelical Church in Sarajevo, private ownership.
(The present condition and location of the altar painting are unknown;
it was very likely destroyed.)
530 BETI ŽEROVC

If, to conclude, we look at the fourth and “final” element in the process of successful
exhibiting, we can say that here too Kobilca was quite skilful. Understanding well that
successful exhibitions could help her paintings sell and win her substantial private and
public commissions, she was very good at transferring fame into practice – i.e. converting
symbolic capital to economic capital. She knew how to obtain buyers and clients, and how
to produce artwork that met their general satisfaction.15
The fact that Kobilca was a popular painter of portraits, genre scenes, and still lifes is
today taught as part of one’s general education in Slovenia. But here we should add that,
along with her prestigious secular public commissions (such as the painting Slovenia Bows
to Ljubljana), she also won demanding church commissions – a part of her oeuvre that is
not very well known today. Less known, for example, are Kobilca’s earlier full-length
pictures of the Madonna surrounded by angels for churches in the Upper Carniolan villa-
ges of Kropa and Podbrezje (the Tabor Church); the same can be said of the religious
pictures she made for certain private clients. One of the works she presented at her solo
shows in Ljubljana in 1889 and in Zagreb in 1890, for instance, was the large painting
Mary and Jesus. She also took part in competitions for church commissions: we know that
in 1899, in the competition for a side altar in the important pilgrimage church in Brezje
(also in Upper Carniola), she lost to the painter Ivan Grohar. Kobilca also painted the portra-
its of the highest church dignitaries in the region, including Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer’s
portrait for the Ljubljana municipality. She was particularly active in religious painting in
Sarajevo, where at the request of Bishop Josip Stadler – another of her portrait subjects –
she painted a number of frescos for the Jesuit Church of SS. Cyril and Methodius some-
time before 1900. She also made the altar painting of St. Roch for the Catholic church in
the town of Kiseljak; this was done in return, as it were, for her rent-free apartment and
studio in the Provincial Museum in Sarajevo. And sometime before the summer of 1905,
she painted the large altar painting Christ on the Mount of Olives for the Protestant Evan-
gelical Church in Sarajevo.16
Another part of Kobilca’s career that receives too little serious attention is her “Orien-
talist” phase in Sarajevo. Not only was this a remarkably prolific time for the painter; it is
also extremely interesting because of the specific context in which it occurred.
Like many other artists, Kobilca found ready support for her work in the colonization
mechanisms the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had established in Bosnia with the goal of
modernizing the province, fostering a stronger sense of national identity among the Bo-
snian population, and reducing the nationalistic tendencies from the Serbian and Croatian
sides. As part of this effort, Vienna pursued an aggressive cultural policy, which at the
same time included loud propaganda, both inside and outside Bosnia, about the province’s
progress under Austrian rule. Along with introducing a Western form of education and
administration in Bosnia, cultural instruments were also employed: exhibitions, the con-
struction of a provincial museum and the organizing of various local collections for it, the

15 Kobilca’s success in this respect should hardly be taken for granted; we find that many artists never realize such a
conversion, or that it comes too late for them to enjoy. From Kobilca’s correspondence with her sister Marija, we see
how much effort the painter had to constantly invest in order to make a living in her profession, how much thinking,
proposing, strategic planning, working, and socializing was needed to get actual sales or lucrative work. To earn money,
the painter also did a great deal of teaching. Her family’s assistance and inherited money also helped her get by.
16 For more on her church commissions, see Beti ŽEROVC, “Zelo slovenska slika”, in Barbara JAKI, ed., Slovenski

impresionisti in njihov èas 1890-1920 (Ljubljana: Narodna galerija, 2008), 116 n. 3; and TRDINA, “Ivana Kobilca”,
101.
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 531

19. Ivana Kobilca, Bosnian with Gusle, ca. 1900, oil on canvas, 92.5×53.2 cm,
private ownership. Photograph: National Gallery of Slovenia Photography
Archive © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
532 BETI ŽEROVC

20. Ivana Kobilca, Bosnian Woman with Two Female Servants (or Three Bosnian Women),
ca. 1900, oil on canvas (destroyed). Photograph: National Gallery of Slovenia Photography
Archive © National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

publication of lavishly illustrated magazines, and the preparation of a separate volume

about the province for the encyclopaedia Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in
Wort und Bild [The Austro-Hungarian monarchy in words and pictures]. The production
of such a comprehensive cultural platform and the physical construction of the city of
Sarajevo required that a large and diverse assortment of “Western” artists and intellectuals
move to the area in that period. They most likely came eagerly, both from romantic impul-
ses – to discover “the Orient in the heart of Europe” – and because they were usually very
well paid for their services.17
In this lively environment, Kobilca soon discovered a group of like-minded painters
and, with the brothers Ewald and Leo Arndt as well as Maximilian Liebenwein, formed
the Sarajevo Painters’ Club. The club provided a structure for accepting various commis-
17For more on the subject, see Aida LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Cultural Politics
in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Creation of the Western Type of Art”, Kakanien revisited, 26 May 2006; http://
www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/ALipa1/ (accessed 28 Jan. 2013). For the broader context of Orientalism in ninete-
enth-century Austrian art, see Erika MAYR-OEHRING and Elke DOPPLER, eds., Orientalische Reise: Malerei und
Exotik im Späten 19. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. (Vienna: Wien Museum, 2003).
 IVANA KOBILCA – A CAREER IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN’S PAINTING 533

sions and carrying out group activities; also, there is much evidence to suggest that the
four painters shared a strong bond of friendship.18
They were all, for example, very active in the pro-Austrian illustrated magazine Nada
[Hope], and Kobilca herself was its third most published artist in terms of reproductions.
The twenty-three reproductions of her work place her just behind the Croatian artists Vla-
ho Bukovac and Menci Clement Crnèiæ, who each had twenty-eight publications of their
work.19 As a club, the four painters also published in Vienna a portfolio of prints with
Bosnian subjects – the commercial Bilder-mappe der Sarajevo Maler-Clubs [Picture port-
folio from the Sarajevo Painters’ Club]. They also seem to have had successful exhibitions
as a club in Austria, Germany, and Hungary.20
Kobilca’s participation in the volume on Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Austro-Hun-
garian encyclopaedia is particularly interesting. Along with her club colleague Ewald
Arndt, she received an imperial award for her work in 1902. Although Kobilca did not in
fact do many illustrations for the volume, she did portray subjects for which, as a woman,
she was probably deemed a more suitable painter – given the Muslim practice of protec-
ting private family life – than her male colleagues.21 The encyclopaedia includes four pic-
tures by Kobilca: Mohammedanische Frauencostüme nebst Details [Mohammedan
women’s costumes with details], Besuch bei einer mohammedanischen Wöchnerin [A
visit to a Mohammedan woman after childbirth], Liebeswerben [Courting], and Verschle-
iern der mohammedanischen Braut [Veiling the Mohammedan bride].22 All in all, she
painted a large number of the most diverse Oriental subjects, but, unfortunately, we know
of most of them only from secondary sources, such as the magazine Nada. We do not
know where all these paintings are located today, nor do we know much about what inspi-
red their creation or how they were received. We can assume, however, that these pictures
were made mainly from a commercial impulse and that at least some of them travelled
westward and were sold (or presented for sale) in the provinces of Austria-Hungary (inc-
luding Carniola) and Germany. One such painting – which found its way to Slovenia –
18 Not a great deal is known about this club. See Ljubica MLADENOVIÆ, Graðansko slikarstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini
u XIX. veku (Sarajevo: IRO “Veselin Masleša”, OO, izdavaèka djelatnost, 1982), 101-103.
19 LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 4.
20 Ljubica Mladenoviæ writes that, in early 1899, Leo Arndt exhibited paintings with Bosnian themes, previously publi-

shed in Nada, at the Verein Berliner Künstler. His success presumably encouraged Max Liebenwein and Kobilca to
suggest to Kosta Hörmann, the editor of Nada, that the original paintings and drawings for the magazine’s illustrations
be regularly collected and exhibited each year in the art centres of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Hörmann readily
agreed to the idea, since he saw at once that this would also be good advertising for the Austrian administration in
Bosnia. He signed a contract with the painters and with a transport company, which committed itself to equip and
transport ten travelling exhibitions a year for 500 gulden. Other than mentioning in passing the cities of Dresden, Berlin,
and Budapest, Mladenoviæ does not say exactly where the actual exhibitions were held (MLADENOVIÆ, Graðansko
slikarstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini, 102). Various brief references to the topic can also be found in Kobilca’s letters to her
sister Marija. In a letter dated 20 May 1900 (in private holdings), she writes about exhibiting in Dresden, her colleagues’
successful sales, and the hope that she too would sell something.
21 Because she was a woman, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann (1819-1881), for example, was able to infiltrate harems and

even paint real Near Eastern princesses entirely in keeping with the Orientalist canon of the time and sexist fantasies
about harems and Oriental beauties. For a detailed study of this artist, see Mary ROBERTS, “Harem Portraiture: Elisa-
beth Jerichau-Baumann and the Egyptian Princess Nazli Hanim”, in Deborah CHERRY and Janice HELLAND, eds.,
Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt., USA: Ashgate Publi-
shing, 2006), 77-98.
22 Die Österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, v. 22: Bosnien und Herzegovina (Vienna: Druck und

Verlag der kaiserlich-königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1901), 315, 337, 355, 359. Lipa discusses the significance
of all four images (LIPA, “The Austro-Hungarian Period in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, 7-9).
534 BETI ŽEROVC

seems to have been the “harem picture” Bosnian Women with Two Female Servants, which
was apparently destroyed during the Second World War when the Ruperèvrh Castle near
the town of Novo Mesto burned down.23 Another ambitious work of this sort, which is
still in Slovenia in a private collection, is the painting Bosnian with Gusle.
But it is Kobilca’s work for churches – her frescoes and altar paintings – that represent,
as it were, the peak of her Sarajevo period, for along with her portraits of the city’s leading
figures, they clearly attest to the high esteem in which the Slovene artist was held. Despite
the numerous artists working in the city, Kobilca succeeded in winning key commissions
in the most prominent new buildings in the heart of Sarajevo, such as the Jesuit and Evan-
gelical churches.24

23 Ljerka MENAŠE, “Umetniški razvoj Ivane Kobilce”, Zbornik za umetnostno zgodovino, new series 2 (1952): 141
(reproduction on p. 143). Judging from the reproductions in Nada, these pictures varied greatly in quality.
24 Judging from photographs (!), these works are not among Kobilca’s best. The painter also entered negotiations –

apparently without success – for similar commissions in Berlin, where she lived from 1907 until the First World War.
See, for example, her letters to her sister Marija dated 10 Dec. 1908 and 29 Jan. 1909 (in private holdings).