This rather vibrant painting in the National Museum of Serbia is Colporteuse, painted by Omer Mujadžić (1903–1991) in 1929 or 1930 using oil on canvas. The French title refers to a female street vendor and the word NOVINE, meaning “newspapers”, on the papers confirms that she is selling them. Her enormous eyes and open mouth make her look as though she has just discovered the story of the decade, although she may simply be calling out the latest headlines to passing customers. The whole arrangement looked so contemporary that I had assumed it was a much more recent painting rather than a work which is now approaching its centenary, although my art knowledge is hardly that of Sister Wendy Beckett.
Mujadžić was born in Bosanska Gradiška in 1903 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb at the age of only fifteen. After graduating, he continued his studies in Paris, where he encountered the work of Picasso, André Lhote and the old masters in the Louvre. He later became associated with the Earth Group, whose artists believed that art should reflect contemporary society rather than concern itself solely with attractive subjects. That perhaps explains why he chose to paint the woman selling the news rather than one of the politicians, editors or newspaper proprietors more commonly associated with it.
I rather liked this painting because it looked to me ahead of its time, although its almost cartoon-like features also made it slightly unsettling. What makes it particularly effective is that I couldn’t decide whether the woman was frightened, surprised or simply shouting loudly enough to sell her newspapers. Indeed, she certainly appears more animated than most people employed to sell newspapers at that hour of the morning. This painting stayed in my mind for much longer than many technically accomplished portraits of important people that were displayed elsewhere in the gallery. I’m still not sure that I’d hang it on my wall, with the usual caveat that I lack the DIY skills to hang anything there.