In the Gallery of Matica srpska in Novi Sad there live two small people who are having, let us say, a Very Moody Sort of Day.
Here is Sulking Girl by Uroš Predić (1879)—presented to the gallery by the artist himself in 1949, seventy years after he painted her, which suggests he was rather fond of her too. She is sitting as though somebody has just informed her that the jam has run out. Or that dresses do not fly. Or that Everything, generally speaking, Is Wrong. She will not say a word about it. She will simply sit. Very seriously. Because sometimes the only thing to be done is to keep quiet and be a little sad.
Beside her hangs Child at the Window by Judith Eisenhut (1920–30). She is not cross. She is merely looking. Out there, where the field is. Where the wind is. Where somebody may perhaps be waiting. Or coming. Or calling. And you are still quite small, but you understand already—there it is, Something Very Real Indeed.
And here the gallery does something rather wonderful. Beneath the official label hangs a second one, in wobbly coloured letters, giving the picture the title a child gave it. Eisenhut’s girl at the window has been retitled by Nikola, aged ten: A Dreadful Summer in the Village.
Which is, one has to admit, the better title. The curators wrote Child at the Window; Nikola supplied the reason she is at it.
Childhood is when everything matters. The jam and the wind and sitting in an armchair and looking out of a window. Particularly when it is that sort of day.
