City, c. 1895
Georgios Roïlos was a mercurial figure with a strong interest in the investigation of problems of art. After studying at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1880 - 1887), he was a student for a year in Munich and Paris, while after a brief stay in Athens, where he was actually elected in 1894 professor at the School of Fine Arts, he went to England, where he lived for five years in London and Liverpool, where he played an active part in the country's artistic life. The experience of fighting in the Helleno-Turkish War of 1897 turned his interest to the depiction of war scenes, which was in line with the spirit of the new approaches which had already come to the fore in the nineteenth century, within the context of a historical journalism which had the realistic recording of events as its purpose.
In the landscapes of City and Woman on the Rocks, Roilos, without ranging himself with the movements and embodying thinking of the period, he contents himself with daring in the use of colour and skill in design, as he indulges in a sui generis exploration of light.
