Seated Girl with Bow, 1891

The early works of Εconomou bear a strong mark of his apprenticeship with Nikiphoros Lytras, at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. Within the framework of academic realism, he depicted scenes from everyday life, in which the genre painting element predominated, in harmonious compositions and in balanced warm colours. However, he soon turned towards landscape painting, introducing into his art a freer style and a brighter colour range, which put him within the 'open air' movement which was predominant in Greece in the early twentieth century. The many views from the environs of Athens which he produced are not only examples of this free painting, but sometimes also living testimonies of topographical depiction at the time when they were recorded.