Georgios Roilos

Georgios Roilos, whose family came from Stemnitsa in Arcadia, was born in Athens in 1867. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1880 to 1887 and continued his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He returned to Athens in 1894 and, a year later, he was appointed professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He served in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and translated his firsthand battlefront experience into painted scenes, giving rise to the series "The Battle of Pharsala". In 1903 he resigned his professorship and spent five years in England—in London and Liverpool—where he continued to exhibit. He returned to Athens in 1908 and taught painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1910 to 1927. In 1912 he went to the front again, recording events from the Balkan Wars. In addition to military scenes, he painted portraits, genre scenes, still lifes, mythological subjects, and landscapes that celebrated the Greek countryside. For many years he kept a studio in a tower-house in Kastella, Piraeus. He died from dengue fever in Athens in 1928.