Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (1(37).2012/2013)

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The Museum

The Gallery of i9th-Century Art still continues to employ the classic aesthetic I historical
model for the exhibition of works. The display is arranged chronologically with groupings
according to style, trend, artistic circle (e.g., the Munich school, the St Petersburg school, the
Pont-Aven school, Les Nabis) and artistic personalities.
The gallery begins with paintings from the leading artistic currents of the first half of the
19th century - Classicism and Romanticism. We decided against introducing dichotomic divi-
sions (such as rationalism vs. mysticism, reason vs. feeling, imitation vs. expression, sketch vs.
finished work) under the belief that this kind of traditional analysis fails to reflect the character
of art from this period. Instead, we attempted to generate a “dialogue” between works from
a common time period, but from various areas and circles. In his competition entry Saul’s Wrath
at David, Antoni Brodowski treats a lofty and ancient subject from the Old Testament. From
a formal perspective, the artist employs (as he also does in his Oedipus and Antigone, 1828) aca-
demic principles defined in i7th-centuiy French art theoiy. The proximity of Polish art of the 19th
centuiy to French patterns becomes evident in a comparison of a sketch of a male figure by the
Romantic painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres with Brodowskis Paris in a Phrygian Cap
(ca. 1813-1814), or a portrait by François Gérard with Brodowskis portrait of his own brother
(ca. 1815). Equally enlightening is the juxtaposition of Embroiderer at the Window (1817) by Georg
Friedrich Kersting (fig. 1), a German Romantic artist with ties to the Biedermeier style, with
the work The Drawing Room in the Artist’s Home (ca. 1830) by Aleksander Kokular. Both works
emanate a sense of quiet and concentration, both reveal a similar treatment of light and both
are marked with a painstaking attention to detail. The next section of the exhibition presents
the development of historical painting in the mid-iqth century, from Piotr Michałowski to Jan
Matejko, with a casual comparison to painting from the rest of Europe.
We see taking shape in the 19th century a sentiment about the impoverished state of art in
the first half of the centuiy. It was a belief shared by Adam Mickiewicz, who referred to paint-
ings as copies, due to their being an imitation of reality. In 1844 he wrote on the subject of the
Polish inclination for harbouring “memories of an invisible world; what others, for fear of them
disappearing carve in stone, cast in bronze, and spread on canvas, the Slavs keep alive.”3 In
Wiesław Juszczak’s opinion, historical painting, bridging the gap between painting and litera-
ture, was brought to the forefront of the arts world thanks to Artur Grottger and Jan Matejko,
since “the generation of bards never produced a master who was their equal.”4 The gallery’s
pieces by Piotr Michałowski, Henryk Rodakowski and Józef Simmler demonstrate both the
development of a Polish national awareness and Polish art’s references to French works that
had inspired it - by artists such as Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix
and Paul Delaroche. Michałowski endowed Polish painting with a new understanding of
space and introduced unique compositional approaches and a textural liberty reminiscent of
Delacroix. His images of anonymous heroes of Napoleon’s campaigns were unique in Poland’s
nationalist / patriotic painting, which, emphasizing national issues under the inspiration of
literature and the like, tended to portray the deeds of homegrown military units.
Of particular importance within the exhibition is the room devoted to the work of Jan
Matejko. Shaped by Romantic poetry, this master’s achievements in painting imparted a spe-
cific type of historical awareness on later generations of Polish artists and writers. Stanisław

3 From: Maria Poprzęcka, Arcydzieła malarstwa polskiego [Masterpieces of Polish Painting] (Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo Arkady, 1997), p. 5.
4 Juszczak, p. 39.