Nicholas Gysis

Considered by many to be the father of Greek nineteenth-century painting, Nicholas Gysis was at the apex of his career when he painted The Neighbours (The Gossips) in the early 1880s. Illustrating the rapt attention with which two neighbours gossip and chat, the painting celebrates the importance of community and domestic life. The women huddle around the glowing embers in a brazier, grinding coffee beans and drinking coffee, their only onlooker a curious cat.

This scene was inspired by Gysis' village on the island of Tinos, and along with other works of this period, is a tribute to the artist's birthplace and the daily rituals of his countrymen. As Montandon notes in his 1902 monograph on the artist, based on the artist's records that were later destroyed during an air raid in 1944: 'Now starts the most fruitful period of the artist's genre painting; Gysis is in Munich only in body; his thoughts constantly return to the beauty of the Aegean Sea. His brush conveys powerful images of daily life in Athens, Smyrna and Tinos' (Marcel Montandon, Nikolaus Gysis, Bielefeld & Leipzig, 1902, p. 56b).

The Neighbours (The Gossips) decorated Gysis' daughter's house in Munich for many years. According to Nelli Missirli, it was during the 1880s that the painter preferred depicting two or three human figures, at close proximity, set in a simple and unadorned interior. In this and his other genre paintings of the period Gysis took a keen interest in exploring Greek manners, customs, rituals, costumes and physiognomy. The gnarled, sinewy hands of the women indicate a long, full life and exude character and spirit. The Franco-Greek critic and gallerist Christian Zervos called this close observation 'the adoration of the hands', believing that expression in depiction of hands such as these by Gysis spoke volumes about the sitter.

Having initially studied at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, in 1865 Gysis was awarded a scholarship to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Under the tutelage of  Karl von Piloty he developed an obsession for depicting textures evident in  the meticulous rendering of fabric patterns, the contrast between soft animal fur and glazed ceramic cups, and between coarse wood and polished metal.