Theodor Pallady was born in Iasi on April 11, 1871 in a noble family. His mother, the sister of the diplomat Neculai B. Cantacuzino, together with his father Iancu Pallady had estates both in Iași and in Perieni, where the great painter spent his childhood. The artist attended the "Sf. Gheorghe" high school in Bucharest, then left for Germany to study at the Dresden Polytechnic.
While studying engineering, the young Pallady took drawing and painting classes with Ernst Erwin Oehme, who, noticing his qualities, advised him to go to Paris to deepen his stylistics. In 1892, after enrolling at the Academy des Beaux-Art in the French capital, he managed to get a place in the studio of the great French painter, engraver and draftsman Gustave Moreau. In these courses, Theodor Pallady meets Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet. Also in Moreau's studio, Pallady meets and forms a close friendship with Henri Matisse, with whom he later collaborates through correspondence in order to improve each other's artistic skills.
In 1904 he returned to Romania and exhibited at the Official Salons and at the Romanian Athenaeum. He kept in touch with Paris where he opened numerous solo exhibitions until the end of 1940. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale between 1924 and 1942.
Static natures are the most studied works of the artist, and the ensemble often represents a calm harmony that invites the viewer to decipher it carefully and slowly. The painter's artistic language is easy to identify with classic values, with a unitary style based on line and shape, and colour being second characteristic in his art. The painter's artistic creation is based on the essence of technical drawing studied for the first time in Dresden. Pallady's style can be distinguished from that of his symbolist contemporaries, and the genre most often painted by the artist is still life. The author arranges his own compositions in which a vase of flowers often appears. The author focused his work on simple objects from everyday life, and in Parisian landscapes the painter chose places near the Seine to render the trembling of light on the luster of water, to highlight buildings, the movement of the river or the foliage of trees.
Theodor Pallady was declared Emeritus Master of Romanian Art just a few months before his death and a post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy. In Iași, the artist is commemorated with the name of a street in Copou Hill, of an Art Gallery on Lăpușneanu Street, and part of the artist's work can be viewed in the Museum of Arts in the Palace of Culture Museum Complex of Iași.
