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

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The Museum

experiences, as an emotional category”5 (fig. 3). Polish landscapes in the works of Maksymilian
and Aleksander Gierymski, Józef Chełmoński, and Witold Pruszkowski emanate a melan-
choly and longing, an internal disquiet and a concerted focus. The shades of brown and grey
that dominate the colour palettes of these pieces lie in stark contrast to the accents of diffuse
light - an effect that reinforces the sense of desolation and expectation. Polish artists from
the Munich circle retained in their “painterly memories” (a term coined by Simon Schama6)
views of their homeland, often sombre and evoking a nostalgic mood, and expressing a feeling
of loneliness or glorifying the allure of life as it once had been. Chełmońskfs Indian Summer
(1875), in spirit one of the most Polish Symbolist landscapes, was created in Warsaw, far away
from the Ukrainian steppe it depicts.
Polish artists owed to the Munich school their exquisite mastery of painting technique
and a skilfulness in employing a wide gamut of soft and cool hues. Graduates of the Munich
academy - the Gierymski brothers, Adam Chmielowski, Józef Brandt and Chełmoński - took
a new understanding of painting back to their homeland. This revelation was initiated largely
by the principles of realism discovered among the circle of Wilhelm Leibl, who himself was
influenced by Gustave Courbet. The group of artists associated with Leibl shared an openness
and plurality of attitudes regarding aesthetics, and their works were differentiated by their
exceptional technical quality and a romantic atmosphere stemming from the use of muted
colours. In the room dedicated to Polish artists from the Munich school, we see Courbet’s
Seashore (1867, fig. 4), emanating an aura of emptiness, and a sensation of nothingness and hu-
man fragility, in correspondence with Gieiymski’s “mood landscapes” (Stimmungslandschaft).
What sets Courbet’s landscape apart from the works surrounding it in this room is its vivid
colour. For Polish artists, Courbet’s call to “be contemporary” by reflecting life and nature
without sacrificing individuality meant searching for a “here and now” even in bygone times,
as can particularly be noticed in two of Józef Brandt’s paintings on display in the gallery: Rescue
of Tartar Captives (1878) and Czarniecki atKölding (1870).
Conversely, the painters educated at the St Petersburg academy introduced elements of
early Expressionism into Polish art. Despite sharing a similar understanding of landscape
and portraiture to their Munich-educated counterparts, the St Petersburg-educated painters
favoured different artistic means. Ferdynand Ruszczyc’s Soil (1898), Konrad Krzyżanowski’s
portraits or Stiepan Kolesnikov’s Orthodox Church at Dusk (1906) are moody and extremely
personal works depicting a deformed reality. What differentiates them from works by art-
ists of the Munich school is their intense colours, sketch-like spontaneity and boldness of
strokes. Their expressionism was an attempt to create a new method of “internalised” com-
munication between the artist and the viewer. The landscapes, portraits and genre scenes are
individualised, transformed into tension-filled visions of reality and human figures byway of
the artists’ extreme subjectivity. The contrasting “unnatural,” dark or monochromatic hues,
the exceedingly flat or unnaturally bulging perspective and a deformation of nature under-
scoring man’s alienation from his surroundings are all techniques employed to intensify the
expressive potency of these works.
One room is dedicated to Polish artists’take on Post-Impressionism of the late 19th century.
Here, we find works by Józef Pankiewicz, Władysław Podkowiński, Olga Boznańska, Leon
Wyczółkowski and Jan Stanisławski alongside paintings by Auguste Renoir, Max Slevogt and
5 Juszczak, p. 45.
6 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: Fontana Press, 1996).