Happy Brothers
Uroš Predić, 1887
Image not available: work still under copyright
Happy Brothers, Their Poor Mother!, usually called simply Happy Brothers, is an 1887 oil painting by the Serbian artist Uroš Predić. It shows four drunken young men staggering through their village at dawn while the mother of one of them shouts her disapproval from a distance. Predić, who came from Orlovat, drew on a sight he saw often there: young men coming back from the tavern at daybreak and waking the whole community. He meant the picture as a moral lesson and hoped villagers would recognise their own decline. The result was quite different. Locals were flattered to be shown at all, and the scene's humour helped it win favour with critics and the public. Art historians have compared its loose, textured brushwork and muddy road to Courbet, though its figures are not caricatured, so any debt to Hogarth or Daumier is hard to see. The painting has been held by the National Museum of Serbia since before 1890.
- Painter
- Uroš Predić
- Date
- 1887
- Dimensions
- 82 × 122 cm
- Museum
- National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade