DOI issue:
Nr. 3
DOI article:Artykuły
DOI article:Žerovc, Beti: Ivana Kobilca - a Career in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Women's Painting
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70770#0516
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BETIŻEROVC
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
Ivana Kobilca - a Career in the Context
of Nineteenth-Century Women s Painting
The 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 Societe 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 Camiola, 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”, Zbornikza
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.
BETIŻEROVC
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
Ivana Kobilca - a Career in the Context
of Nineteenth-Century Women s Painting
The 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 Societe 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 Camiola, 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”, Zbornikza
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.