An exhibition of paintings by the major marine painter Konstantinos Volanakis, with works from the collection of the Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, was inaugurated at the Chania Municipal Art Gallery on Friday 21st July. A total of 57 works by the artist make up the exhibition, which is being held under the sponsorship of the Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. The exhibition also includes oil paintings belonging to the Hellenic Navy, the Hellenic Parliament and the Bank of Greece.

Ancient Greek triremes, sailing ships, steamships and steamboats, heroic naval battles, ships on fire, but also everyday scenes all find a place in the canvases of the artist, who was a significant representative of the Munich School.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated colour catalogue in Greek and English. Throughout the period of its opening there will be organised tours for adults and educational programmes for pupils of all school grades. It will run until 31st December 2023. (Haniotika Nea, 21/07/23)

The life of Konstantinos Volanakis
Konstantinos Volanakis was born in Heraklion, Crete, on 17th March 1837 and died in Piraeus on 29th June 1907. One of the most important Greek artists of the 19th century, he is considered the father of Greek marine painting. While his family name suggests Cretan origins, his father Dimitrios was a wealthy merchant from Syros, while his mother Charikleia was from Smyrna.

Konstantinos studied at the Gymnasio of Syros, where the family had moved for professional reasons, leaving school in 1856. The same year, encouraged by his elder brothers, he went to Trieste to work as a bookkeeper with the company of Giorgos Afentoulis, a sugar merchant to whom he was related by marriage. It was there that he started sketching boats, ships and harbours in the pages of the company’s account books. Discovering his talents, the Afentoulis family encouraged him to study art, and his brother Athanasios Volanakis paid for him to go to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was a pupil of the noted historical painter Karl von Piloty.

Participating in a government-sponsored competition for a work depicting the 1866 battle of Lissa – in which the smaller fleet of the Austrian Empire achieved a significant victory over the larger and better equipped Italian fleet – Volanakis won first prize for his drawings, which included a two-year voyage with Austrian warships on the Adriatic sea and an exhibition of his finished work in Vienna. A later work on the same subject was purchased by the Emperor Franz Josef for 1,000 florins, and over the next decade Volanakis exhibited regularly with the Artistic Society of Munich. In 1877 he exhibited the “Naval Battle of Trafalgar” in London, and the work was purchased by the British Admiralty.

In 1883 he returned to Greece and settled in Piraeus, where he found ample subject matter for his paintings. He was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts where he taught Elementary Graphics and Statue Drawing until 1903, when he retired for health reasons. At the same time he continued to participate in national and international exhibitions.

He was very poor in his later years, partly due to his large family (he had seven children) and because of a declining public interest his art. In an effort to increase his income, he reversed the usual method of painting first, then framing, by working with a group of framers who would make luxurious carved frames first, then creating paintings to fit them. He died in 1907 from complications arising from a hernia. As his funeral fell on an important election day, it was attended by only 5-6 people. (Wikipedia)

Nostos of the Sea
The illustrated catalogue of the exhibition – a handsome publication well worth the €20.00 euros cover price – translates the title of the exhibition as “Constantine Volonakis – Nostos of the Sea”. Nostos, meaning homecoming, comes from the Ancient Greek nostimon – first used in Homer’s Odyssey to reflect Odysseus’ longing for the day of return to his homeland. The root of the word nostalgia, it conveys Volanakis’ emotional attachment to the subject which was his constant source of inspiration. In the words of Giannis Giannakakis, Chania’s Deputy Mayor for Culture and President of the Municipal Gallery of Chania, in his introduction to the catalogue:

“He wandered the seas that he loved, just like Odysseus. He sailed their waters, at times serene and hospitable to the humble fishing boats, at other times churned by gunpowder-laden vessels, ready for another great naval battle that would earn its own page in history books. He devoted his entire life to becoming their champion. … In the near sixty paintings by Constantine Volanakis, entrusted to the Municipal Gallery of Chania by major institutions, let us not merely admire the details of the shipbuilding art that the painter rendered with remarkable accuracy. Let us allow our eyes to wander through the different hours of the day and enjoy the changes of light – from dawn to dusk – as reflected on the aquatic surface: the ultimate muse of Constantinos Volanakis.”