Footnotes

Provenance
D. Taktikos collection, Mytilene.
Christie's Athens, Greek Sale, 15 December 1998, lot 37.
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner.

*Veuillez noter qu'en raison de la réglementation grecque, ce lot ne peut pas être exporté de Grèce et sera disponible pour consultation et inspection à Athènes sur rendez-vous ou lors de l'exposition à Athènes, du 8 au 10 novembre 2023. Cette œuvre restera à Athènes pendant la vente aux enchères.

*Please note that due to Greek regulation, this lot cannot be exported from Greece and will be available for viewing and inspection in Athens either by appointment or during the Athens Preview, 8-10 November 2023. This work will be located in Athens during the auction.

Expositions
Athens, Hellenic American Union, An Exhibition of Murals and Paintings by Theophilos, March 17 - April 10, 1970, no. 23 (listed in the exhibition catalogue).
Athens, Galerie 3, Theofilos, February 1982, no. 19 (listed in the exhibition leaflet).

Littérature
Roptro tou Volou magazine, no. 9-10, May-August 1994, p. 64 (illustrated).


Like many great masters from the past, Theofilos was by no means reluctant to draw his iconography from earlier paintings, lithographs, postcards or book illustrations, source material he nonetheless ingenuously reworked to fit his own vision. Here, his picture is based on a popular colour lithographic print that used to hang in many village stores around Greece in days of yore leaving little doubt on how their owners felt about consumer credit: he who sells for cash grows rich while he who sells on credit grows poor.

Theofilos adhered closely to his model, especially in terms of space organisation, representational motifs, and compositional structure, with the man on the right enjoying his wealth while the other going bankrupt and living in sheer poverty. Despite these obvious borrowings, however, he treated the subject in his own terms, transforming the same scene into a completely new aesthetic experience. As noted by the art critic A. Xydis, "the transformation of academic prints into true masterpieces is ample proof of Theofilos's wisdom. In most of his works he never succumbed to the conventionality of his original sources."¹

This picture was painted in 1926, the year Theofilos returned to his native island of Mytilene following a forty-year odyssey. There, his imaginary universe, which had crystallised on the walls of village houses and shops around Mt. Pelion, came back to life in a new and delightful manifestation. As noted by N. Matsas, "on Mytilene, Theofilos enjoyed a very creative and prolific period, during which he painted some of his best works."<sup>2

1</sup> A. Xydis, Proposals for the History of Modern Greek Art [in Greek], vol. I, Athens 1976, pp. 36-38.
² N. Matsas, The Tale of Theofilos [in Greek], Estia editions, Athens 1978, p. 153.