Old Fisherman (1902)

Old Fisherman, painted by Tivadar Csontvary Kosztka in 1902, looks like a straightforward portrait of a weathered old man on a harbour coast. It is not. Csontvary built two different men into the same face and split the whole canvas down the middle to do it. Behind one shoulder the sea lies flat and pale beside a quiet coast. Behind the other it breaks white under steamships pushing black smoke into the sky. The face follows: one eye calm, the other harder, the two halves refusing to agree.Mirror the calm half and you get a serene old man with his hands folded like a man at prayer. Mirror the other and the same face turns menacing. It is the most discussed feature in Hungarian painting and you can prove it yourself with a phone in under a minute. Csontvary was a pharmacist who quit at 27 to paint, was treated as an eccentric for most of his life, and sold almost nothing. Many critics now call him Hungary's greatest painter. The original hangs in the Otto Herman Museum in Miskolc.Museum grade giclee on 380gsm cotton canvas, hand stretched over kiln dried pine, ready to hang. 100 day returns, free tracked shipping, lifetime color warranty.