DOI issue:
Nr. 4
DOI article:Artykuły
DOI article:Gołąb, Maria: Transgresje wczesnej twórczości Józefa Chełmońskiego: O przedstawieniach kobiet w obrazach z Pracowni w Hotelu Europejskim w Warszawie
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70770#0607
596
Maria Gołąb
Transgressions of Józef Chełmoński s Early Oeuvre.
On Representations of Women in the Paintings
from the Europejski Hotel s Studio in Warsaw
Five or six large-sized paintings by Józef Chełmoń-
ski dedicated to the woman and painted at the
Europejski Hotel’s Studio in Warsaw in 1875, of
which only the Indian Summer is generally known,
are the most important artistic manifesto in Polish
art of the time. The Romantic paradigm of Polish
culture alongside the pressure of Positivist
modernity, the experience of Naturalism and
Realism (firstly from Munich, yet also derived from
Courbet’s experiment), as well as the attractiveness
of the allegorical language of art (grounded in the
adoration for Grottger, typical of that generation),
all these mark the major ideological and painterly
horizons of Chełmoński’s art of the period. The
artistic effects of the cycle in question (the latter
partly reconstructed due to three paintings having
disappeared) define the transgressive character of
the oeuvre of the Warsaw artist owing to the
‘borderline’ painterly language, bordering on both
allegory and symbolism. It allowed to create a
radically different statement on the woman versus
the contemporarily valid emancipation discourse by
evoking in all the paintings of the cycle a figure of a
day-dreaming woman. Painting realism clashes here
with the romantic day-dreaming female, a metaphor
of freedom, and other Romantic components: the
correspondance idea - the bond the female
protagonists feel with the spiritual nature of the
world (signalled by the gestures of the girls shown
amidst landscape); narration opposing dreams and
reality; praise of young age, apology of individualism,
with such Romantic motifs as a horse gallopade or a
girl sitting in an open window. The feminine topic
also inspired questions derived from the catalogue
of a feminist research: regarding female sensuality
(the works compared with Courbet’s nudes) and the
position of effigies in that patriarchal discourse. The
opposition of the then artistic criticism against the
autonomy of the spirituality/emotionality of young
women approved in paintings as well as against
equally strongly depicted female sensuality have
allowed to put forth the thesis that Chełmoński
questioned the then valid ideology by proposing
a new woman’s identity in the discussed series,
entirely different from that traditionally defined and
associated not so much with the issue of femininity,
but more broadly with the idea of freedom and
equality. Since they all are paintings which provide
an encounter of equally dreamy and sensual women:
a young gentlewoman overwhelmed by violent
emotions {Returningfrom a Ball)', a young lady from
the manor sitting by the window and gazing inside
the painting, towards the starry sky (one or two
Summer Nightsf, and three peasant girls amidst vast
landscape {Indian Summer, Peasant Girl with a Jug,
andd Girl in the Meadow).
Translated by Magdalena Iwińska
Maria Gołąb
Transgressions of Józef Chełmoński s Early Oeuvre.
On Representations of Women in the Paintings
from the Europejski Hotel s Studio in Warsaw
Five or six large-sized paintings by Józef Chełmoń-
ski dedicated to the woman and painted at the
Europejski Hotel’s Studio in Warsaw in 1875, of
which only the Indian Summer is generally known,
are the most important artistic manifesto in Polish
art of the time. The Romantic paradigm of Polish
culture alongside the pressure of Positivist
modernity, the experience of Naturalism and
Realism (firstly from Munich, yet also derived from
Courbet’s experiment), as well as the attractiveness
of the allegorical language of art (grounded in the
adoration for Grottger, typical of that generation),
all these mark the major ideological and painterly
horizons of Chełmoński’s art of the period. The
artistic effects of the cycle in question (the latter
partly reconstructed due to three paintings having
disappeared) define the transgressive character of
the oeuvre of the Warsaw artist owing to the
‘borderline’ painterly language, bordering on both
allegory and symbolism. It allowed to create a
radically different statement on the woman versus
the contemporarily valid emancipation discourse by
evoking in all the paintings of the cycle a figure of a
day-dreaming woman. Painting realism clashes here
with the romantic day-dreaming female, a metaphor
of freedom, and other Romantic components: the
correspondance idea - the bond the female
protagonists feel with the spiritual nature of the
world (signalled by the gestures of the girls shown
amidst landscape); narration opposing dreams and
reality; praise of young age, apology of individualism,
with such Romantic motifs as a horse gallopade or a
girl sitting in an open window. The feminine topic
also inspired questions derived from the catalogue
of a feminist research: regarding female sensuality
(the works compared with Courbet’s nudes) and the
position of effigies in that patriarchal discourse. The
opposition of the then artistic criticism against the
autonomy of the spirituality/emotionality of young
women approved in paintings as well as against
equally strongly depicted female sensuality have
allowed to put forth the thesis that Chełmoński
questioned the then valid ideology by proposing
a new woman’s identity in the discussed series,
entirely different from that traditionally defined and
associated not so much with the issue of femininity,
but more broadly with the idea of freedom and
equality. Since they all are paintings which provide
an encounter of equally dreamy and sensual women:
a young gentlewoman overwhelmed by violent
emotions {Returningfrom a Ball)', a young lady from
the manor sitting by the window and gazing inside
the painting, towards the starry sky (one or two
Summer Nightsf, and three peasant girls amidst vast
landscape {Indian Summer, Peasant Girl with a Jug,
andd Girl in the Meadow).
Translated by Magdalena Iwińska