Anton Romako
Portrait of a young Man

1878
Residenzgalerie Salzburg, 468

Anton Romako’s Portrait of a young Man shows a narrative; an elegant gentleman in a tailcoat and red cravat is occupied in lighting a cigarette. His face and hands are finely modelled, while his body and the objects on the right are more roughly sketched, and the background is painted in diffuse chiaroscuro, in shades of brown and red.
The man in the painting shows a certain similarity to the oft-portrayed journalist and politician Henri Rochefort (1830–1913).
Romako’s eccentric pictorial language, which overstretched contemporary conceptions of art, made him a precursor of the Austrian Modern period.