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

Iwona Danielewicz The Gallery of 19th-Century Art

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Witkiewicz is known to have reproached Matejko for the overwhelming influence the latter’s
output exerted. Meanwhile, Matejko’s works possessed many characteristics that are analogous
to European painting of that time and to the category known as genre historique, patterned after
literature’s roman historique. Matejko, an expressive historical painter, paid great attention to
details in his treatment of subjects from Polish national history, and as no one in Polish art
before him, he was able to capture his heroes’ state of spiritual consternation and psychologi-
cal depth. In the Matejko Room, we are privy to this master’s most famous works, including
comprehensively restored for the museum’s anniversary The Battle of Grunwald [Tannenberg]
(1878) and the equally revered The Sermon of Piotr Skarga (1864), as well as remarkable portraits
of the artist’s children and wife, and a self-portrait - calling attention to their potent expres-
siveness and masterful execution.
The works of Matejko shaped later artists such as Malczewski, Wyspiański and Mehoffer,
and his influence left a mark on stained-glass design and polychrome work in Krakow churches,
and on the entire lineage of Polish Expressionist portraiture. Yet, after Matejko, historical
painting dwindled in popularity or underwent significant transformation, as evidenced in
works by Malczewski and Wyspiański, which are on display in adjacent rooms.
Continuing through the gallery, visitors can trace the abundance and growing interplay
of a diverse range of influences and aesthetic concepts in art from the second half of the 19th
century. The room that formerly housed an exhibit of academic painting is now devoted to two
phenomena: European academic art and the Polish iteration of the Munich school style. At
that time, Academic art maintained a dominant position in the artistic environments of most
European countries, and Poland’s lack of an academy offering a higher arts education (Wojciech
Gerson’s Drawing Class in Warsaw had only the status of a secondary institution) drove aspir-
ing artists to pursue an education abroad, mainly in Munich and St Petersburg. The wealth
and diversity of European academic art is illustrated by - alongside works by then-popular
artists such as Hans Makart and Gabriel von Max - the well-known and highly prized canvas
The Christian Dirce (1897) by Henryk Siemiradzki (a graduate of the St Petersburg academy,
residing mainly in Rome), as well as pieces by Władysław Czachórski and Maurycy Gottlieb,
a student of Matejko’s (fig. 2). In the paintings of artists educated in Munich, St Petersburg
and Krakow we see similar means of expression, comparable dramatic effects, references to
history, the Bible, mythology, and Shakespearean dramas, as well as fluent use of colour and
a skilful handling of light, especially partial light and partial shadows, in the articulation of
the subject matter. The exhibition’s placement of works by Polish artists alongside those of
artists from Germany and Austria, including Makart and Von Max (both graduates of the
Munich academy), occurs to be a very interesting turn. The Vienna-based Makart became
one of the most famous artists of his day, rivalled only by Siemiradzki in Rome and Lawrence
Alma-Tadema in London. Fittingly, Alma-Tadema’s small Portrait of Ignacy Jan Paderewski is
also on display in this room.
Despite the fact that the Munich and St Petersburg academies were both rooted in a teach-
ing philosophy that was consistent throughout most of Europe, the circles of the two academies
varied artistically, and thus, are represented separately within the gallery’s new arrangement.
Common to both of them is a tendency to reference certain motifs, such as local landscapes,
genre scenes and portraiture. They also made attempts to abandon historical subject matter
in favour of “pure” forms of art. External factors, such as a lack of autonomy, the constant ne-
cessity to reach back into national history and a need to manifest Polishness, all contributed
to a new understanding of history taking shape. “The 1880s saw the emergence of a pervasive
alternate history; history as a field of emotions and moods, a field of individual and collective