Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (16.2016)

which had been dispersed by World War ii and the post-War Communist regime in
Poland. She succeeded in bringing together seventy-nine paintings and drawings;
moreover she collected an enormous amount of information about them and those
that had been lost. The essays included in the catalog are scholarly and presented
with a considered analysis incorporating various aspects of Maurycy s life and work.
The finał sections of the publication titled: Catalog, Exhibitions, and Bibliography
demonstrate a thorough, professional and exhaustive endeavor. The Catalog not
only provides a physical description of the artworks, including information about
their exhibitions and analysis within the catalog text but also, for the first time, es-
tablishes the history of ownership with a confirmed trail of provenance of Maurycy
Gottliebs exhibited paintings and drawings.4
The exhibition “Maurycy Gottlieb. In Search of Identity”, opened in the Herbst
Pałace Museum, a branch of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (Oct. 10,2014 - Jan. 2 2015)
and was exhibited in the Feliks Jasieński Szołayski House of the National Museum
in Kraków (Feb. 13,2015 - May 3,2105).5 The exhibition included forty-six artworks,
including two copies of Maurycy s paintings by his brother, Marcin: Shylock and Jes-
sica, 18876 (a copy of painting of 1876) and Self-Portrait in Bedouin Attire, 1887 (the
original was painted in 1877)7; in addition to two paintings with highly ąuestionable
attribution. One, included in the catalog as a work of Maurycy Gottlieb titled King
Casimir the Great and His Jewish Mistress, which is commonly only attributed to
Maurycy, and another new arrival in his oeuvre Historical Scene8 The inclusion
in a serious catalog published by reputable cultural institutions of misattributed
artworks can easily confuse futurę research and may also lead to an erroneous and
unethical misrepresentation in the marketplace.
In the foreword to the catalog written by museums directors: Jarosław Suchan
and Zofia Gołubiew, the reasons for the undertaking of this new presentation of
Maurycy Gottliebs artworks is as follows: “what lay behind this exhibition was
a strong comńction that art of such renown deserves not only to be constantly re-
called, but also reinterpreted yet again, and by placing this art in different context,
we should be able to revive the meaning contained in it”.9
Thus the reader is led to expect new revelations that have been gleaned from the
current interpretation about Gottliebs oeuvre presented in the writing and exhibi-
tion. Writer Rafał Żebrowski directs his Jewish Identity and Fate to readers, who
do not possess knowledge of the history of Jews in Polish territory. He proceeds
to tell the story “about a great artist, whose fate was a symbol of the creation and
emancipation of Jewish art, but also about a man of passion dynamically seeking his
4 The only postwar catalog on Maurycy Gottliebs artworks with information on provenance of the
paintings was: Maurycy Gottlieb, 1856-1879. Commemorative Exhibition on the Occasion of
the Centennial ofhis Birth, ed. M. Narkiss, Jerusalem 1956.
5 Maurycy Gottlieb. In Search of Identity, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi 2014, p. 190 informs about
exhibit in Kraków “March - May 2015”.
6 Maurycy Gottlieb. In the Search of Identity, p. 174, provides wrong datę 1877.
7 Nehama Guralnki uses different title Self-Portrait in Arab attire, following the title of 1932 exhibit,
and if the organizers of this exhibit intended to focus on identity, they should be very sensitive
in order not to confuse a Bedouin identity with an Arab one, In the Flower ofYouth. Maurycy
Gottlieb 1856-1879, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art 1991, p. 70; Katalog Wystawy Pamiątkowej Dzieł
Maurycego Gottlieba, Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków 1932: “Kopia autoportretu artysty w stroju
Araba”, p. 12.
8 Maurycy Gottlieb. In Search of Identity respectively: pp. 161,169.
9 Ibidem, p. 9.

118

RECENZJE I OMÓWIENIA

Agnieszka Yass-Alston