Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (19.2019)

Figurę 1. Augustyn Mirys,
Self-portrait, ca. 1750 (?),
Borys Voznytsky Lviv Natio-
nal Art Gallery
-> see p. 148
Figurę. 2. Augustyn Mirys,
Self-portrait, ca. 1765 (?),
National Museum in Poznań
-> see p. 148

this pastel is also a self-portrait. The issue of dating remains open. The model is
thirty-something. Thus, if we assume, based on the assertions of Miryss biog-
raphers, that he was born around 1700, the pastel would have to have been cre-
ated before his arrival in Poland. However, can Miryss datę of birth, adopted by
historians, be affirmed? There are no reliable sources to confirm it. Perhaps it is
only a historical construct, and a resultant of the assumption that in 1729 Mirys
was married (the year 1729 being the supposed datę of the now lost portrait of his
Italian wife).39 Assuming the year 1700 as the artists datę of birth, this pastel
would have to be one of the earliest surviving works of his. Although the current
State of knowledge about the painters biography and his oeuvre does not permit
constructing a convincing hypothesis, I am inclined to datę the Lviv pastel to
around 1750, the Poznań painting to the 1760S, and postpone the artists datę
of birth by a decade. If so, then Mirys would be - along with Marteau and Poltz
- one of the first pastel artists active in the Polish Polish Commonwealth.40
X- X- X-
The above considerations, although of exiguous naturę, open up new research
perspectives. First, the postponement of Miryss arrival to Poland from 1730
to 1739 (and thus the postponement of the“adventurous”period in Miryss life to
the turn of the 1730S and 1740S) can serve as an argument in dispelling doubts as
to some paintings’ attributions. For example, we can say that neither the Portrait
of Jan Fryderyk Sapieha (at the Regional Museum in Smoleńsk; dated after 1736
and before 1740)41 nor the Portrait of Konstancja Poniatowska with her son (at
the National Museum in Warsaw,dated at the end of the 1730S) are Miryss works.
Secondly, the Lviv pastel and Hennins mention of the sujets galantes painted by
Mirys give us hope that in the futurę we might be able to find morę works by
the artist. This applies above all to his pastels, which, as a research field, remain
our terra incognito to this day.42 Thirdly, the case of Mirys, a “multi-tasking”
artist, painting in oil, pastel, fresco technique as well as on fabrics (the curtain
for the Białystok theatre, now lost), and creating portraits, scenes of religious,
historical, mythological andgalantes naturę - depending on the clients wishes -
tells us a lot about the local art scene. In Miryss time, only a few artists (such as
the pastel and portrait artist Marteau) decided to adopt a narrow specialization.
Those who tried it (like the draughtsman and portraitist Marcello Bacciarelli)
were eventually forced by their patrons to expand their offer with new genres

39 A. Ryszkiewicz, Mirys Augustyn, p. 586.
40 Not counting the presence of single pastel works in the Warsaw milieu, dated to the turn
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The lack of technical accomplishment in their ex-
ecution suggests that the authors of the said works were not skilled in this particular techniąue.
A. Rudzińska, Pastel w sztuce polskiej do połowy XIX wieku, in: Mistrzowie pastelu. Od Marteau
do Witkacego. Kolekcja Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie, edited by A. Grochala, J. Sikorska,
Warszawa 2015, pp. 46-52.
41 J. Gajewski, Portret w Polsce doby unii polsko-saskiej, “Arteria”, 2004, p. 12.
42 A. Rudzińska, Pastel w sztuce polskiej, pp. 46-52. The difficulty in studying the pastel works
lies mostly in the lack of their Identification within museum collections. This applies not only
to the museum centres in the former eastern lands of the Polish Commonwealth, but even
the flagship Polish museum institutions.

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Konrad Niemira