Paul Joanovitch (Paja Jovanovic) was born in Vršac, (then part of the Austrian Empire, now modern day Serbia) in June 1859. Aged 15, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the tutelage of Christian Griepenkerl (1839-1912). It was there that Joanovitch also studied with Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892).

Initially Joanovitch concentrated on depicting the life and customs of the indigenous people of the Balkans and in 1882 he was awarded the first prize at the academy and an Imperial scholarship for his series of paintings The Wounded Montenegrin.

In 1893 Joanovitch signed a contract with The French Gallery in London to produce a series of works depicting Balkan life; he was also elected a member of the Serbian Academy in the same year, but continued to travel extensively throughout the Caucasus, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Italy and Spain.

By the early 1900s he turned almost exclusively to painting portraits enjoying considerable success with wealthy Viennese patrons. He remained in Vienna for the vast majority of the rest of his working life and died in 1957.

We are grateful to Petar Petrovic of the National Museum, Belgrade for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

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- 19th Century & Orientalist Paintings