Nikiforos Lytras

Nikiforos Lytras was born in Pyrgos, Tinos, in 1832. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1850 to 1856 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1860 to 1865. He returned to Athens in 1866 and was appointed professor of painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he taught until his death. He taught many of the foremost painters of modern Greece, among them Georgios Iakovidis and Georgios Roilos. He traveled to Asia Minor (1873), Munich (1874), Paris (1876), and Egypt (1879). In the 1850s he painted the chapel of Saint George in Haidari, near Athens, and assisted Ludwig Thiersch in decorating the Russian Church in Athens. He participated in the Paris Expositions Universelles (1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900), the Olympia exhibitions (1859 and 1888), the Vienna World’s Fair (1873), and the Munich International Art Exhibition (1879).

He portrayed the prosperous bourgeoisie of his time and scenes from the daily lives of poor Greeks. He is considered the founding figure—indeed the patriarch—of modern Greek painting and a principal representative of the Munich School. He was instrumental in the development of art education in Greece. Beyond genre painting, his work encompassed portraiture, still life, the nude, and themes drawn from history, religion, and mythology. He died in Athens in 1904. In 1933 the Athens School of Fine Arts hosted a major retrospective of his work. He was the father of the painter Nikolaos Lytras.