Georgios Jakobides

Grandpa's Favourite is a picture of familial bliss transcending the generations, in which a toddler is transfixed by his grandfather's pipe. Known for his heartfelt and wry depictions of the relations between children and adults, Jakobides appealed to the sentimentality of nineteenth-century audiences with his illustrations of the triumphs and scrapes associated with childhood.

As in Grandpa's New Pipe, the artist favoured a coarsely-painted and neutral-toned background to emphasise the prominent central figures, lovingly and meticulously rendered in far richer tones and values. Both paintings, much like Jakobides' Little Smuggler, highlight the humour in these precocious children's interest in a symbol of male adulthood and maturity.

After completing his training in Greece, Jakobides moved to Munich and studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste. There he was influenced by the work of German artists Ludwig von Löfftz, Wilhelm Lindenschmidt and Gabriel von Max. According to Maria Katsanaki, 'During his residence in Munich, a period to which can be traced the influences of German impressionism on his work specifically in regard to the rendering of light and colour, he showed particular interest in genre painting, scenes from childhood, as well as the depiction of figures in the countryside' (Marina Lambraki Plaka ed., Four Centuries of Greek Painting, Athens, 1999, p. 661).

Jakobides' observations of everyday life were also strongly influenced by the work of the Dutch Golden Age artist Frans Hals, reflected in the intimate yet comical subject matter as well as the sensitivity conveyed through the focused light and in each soft-edged brushstroke; as well as by Jakobides' introduction to the work of members of the French Realists and the Barbizon School including Courbet and Corot. Each pictorial element of the interior scene is carefully chosen and meticulously painted to express the idyllic tranquillity of domestic family life. The coarse uneven walls and the rough-hewn wooden table describe the family's simple existance - a metaphor for the strong moral values of the working class. 

Like Nicholas Gysis and Nikiforos Lytras, Jakobides is known to have repeated his most popular compositions. Another version of the present work, larger in size, is in a private collection, Athens.