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Ivana Kobilca (1861–1926) is one of the best-loved Slovenian painters of all time, admired not only for her body of work but also for her ambition and dedication to her craft. Although she is not especially well-known outside of Slovenia today (perhaps because a large portion of her extant works are now housed at the National Gallery of Slovenia), during her career she exhibited widely in Europe, including Paris, Venice, and Berlin, as well as her native country and was a member of the prestigious Societe des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 

She was born in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, to a wealthy family that was able to provide her with an excellent education and support her art studies. At the age of eighteen she was sent to Vienna to study art at the Academy there, but she was able to do little beside copy paintings in the gallery. Deciding that Munich, a vibrant artists’ hub of the time, would be a better choice for her education, she left Vienna after a year to study in Munich with Alois Erdtelt. She stayed there for seven years, studying, making important friendships, and even participating in her first exhibition. She was influenced by the naturalist painters Fritz von Uhde in Munich and Jules Bastien-Lepage in France, who bridged the gap between new coloristic sensibility of modern painting and the traditional narrative-driven history paintings of the past. Her own work focuses on portraits and domestic scenes of everyday life, inspired by her immediate surroundings. One of her best-known paintings, Summer, was inspired by her summer visits to her mother’s home in the Slovene countryside. The models are her younger sister and two young cousins – she composed the painting on-location, and then took it back to her studio to finish it with the help of reference photos. It was exhibited in Paris to great acclaim, establishing the twenty-nine-year old as an up-and-coming figure in the art world. 

She moved to Paris for a short time, where she continued to exhibit and study, before moving first to Sarajevo and then to Berlin, finally settling back in her home town of Ljubljana in 1915, where she remained for the remainder of her life. Throughout her career, her work maintains its focus on naturalism and direct observation, resulting in a body of work that rings true and captures her era. 

Beti Zerovc from the University of Ljubljana has written a fascinating in-depth look at Ivana Koblica’s strategic choices for advancing her career by her travel and exhibitions – it’s an interesting look into the art world of the time and how the rising tide of professional female artists made careers out of the available choices. You can read it here. 

Ivana Kobilca, Ironing Women, oil on canvas, 1891

Ivana Kobilca, Parisenne with Letter, oil on canvas, 1892 

Ivana Kobilca, Self-Portrait in White, oil on canvas, c. 1910

Ivana Kobilca, Girl in the Armchair, oil on canvas, 1892

Ivana Kobilca, Zinnias in a Green Bowl, oil on canvas, 1914

Ivana Kobilca, The Coffee Drinker, oil on canvas, 1888

Ivana Kobilca, The Girl in the Dark Vest, oil on canvas, 1886