(Atzgersdorf 1832–1889 Vienna)
Neapolitan Fisherman, oil on canvas, 34 x 45.5 cm, framed, (Rei)

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Cornelia Reiter, Anton Romako, Pionier und Außenseiter der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Belvedere, Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz, Vienna 2010, no.293; Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des 19. Jahrhunderts, Hofheim am Taunus 1979, Vol. II, 1, p. 463, no. 13.

Provenance:
Wilhelm König Collection (1880- 1955), Vienna, to 1926;
collection auctioned at Dorotheum Vienna, 372nd Art Auction, 18. october 1926, lot 91;
private property, Vienna;
410th Art Auction, Dorotheum Vienna, 15. january 1974, lot 118;
private property;
649th Art Auction, Dorotheum Vienna, 11. september 1985, lot 521

“This painting probably depicts the fisherman returning home rather than, as generally claimed, his departure on a voyage to sea. The fisherman’s muscular back is a symbiosis of tension and relaxation, rest and movement. The basket of fish, thrashing in their death throes, the powerful crossed diagonals of the rudder across his shoulders and the high mast, together with the dark, impasto tones, all evoke the expressive heightening of the motif which is so characteristic of Romako’s genre painting of the 1870s.”
(Cornelia Reiter, Anton Romako, Pionier und Außenseiter der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Belvedere, Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz, Vienna 2010 p. 282)