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

Iwona Danielewicz The Gallery of 19th-Century Art

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Paul Signac. Though Polish Post-Impressionist artists incorporated techniques borrowed
from French Impressionism, their work was quite distinct, with a common attitude toward
Impressionism linking the several variations of Post-Impressionist style. In the French ap-
proach, the leading role was played by natural light - it stratified the subject into layers of
various colours and imparted a separation of tones. The painter’s aim was to study the optical
effect of light and to capture its fleetingness in the picture, resulting in a naturalistic recording
of natural elements or outdoor scenes. Polish painters who had been exposed to the work of
the Impressionists treated light as a source of expression inherent in the subject itself, bringing
out the subject’s contrasting shadows and half-tones rather than prismatic colours. Among the
no-teworthy Post-Impressionist paintings in this room are alate landscape from the South
of France by Renoir (1908-1912); a “Dutch-style” landscape by Slevogt, marked by long and
thick strokes of the brush and palette knife; and Signac’s precise Neo-Impressionist landscape
conveying no trace of ethereality in its depiction of a port in Antibes (Antibes. Morning, 1914).
The subsequent pieces demonstrate Józef Pankiewicz’s and Leon Wyczółkowskis move away
from Impressionism, followed by some original works by Jan Stanisławski. After a period of
Divisionist experimentation, the former two artists applied themselves to painting dark and
almost gloomy landscapes, thought-provoking nocturnes and indoor scenes.
Several of the following rooms are dedicated to the two leading styles of the late 19th century -
Symbolism and early Expressionism. “Artistic intensity [at the twilight of the 19th century
in Poland] causes difficulty in the stylistic categorization of paintings from that time, that
symbolic and expressive syndrome of Modernism.”7 We see several examples of works by
Władysław Slewiński and Paul Sérusier, both of whom owe a great deal to the Symbolism of
Paul Gauguin, yet each arriving at their own interpretations of the style. Slewiński gradually
darkened his colour palette towards a shadow play effect, while Sérusier built a hermetic
world of Breton landscapes inhabited by mysterious figures. Both employed principles of
Cloisonnism, bringing to the fore, above all, the decorative character of their canvasses. Along
with Gauguin, they can be credited with the creation of this particular style within European
Modernism as it is understood today - as a rejection of the pursuit of imitating nature and an
acknowledgment that art should exist for art’s sake, with aesthetic quality being an autonomous
value.8 Alongside the works by Slewiński and Sérusier are paintings by the German Symbolist
Franz von Stuck and Wojciech Weiss’s Expressionist Spring (1898) and Obsession (1899-1900).
Also present are works of mythological subject matter, with the intriguing sketch Faun and
a Girl (before 1905) by Max Slevogt and the richly coloured Narcissus (ca. 1900) by Ludwig
von Hofmann. The room also houses compositions that had previously resided in separate
areas by Olga Boznańska and Witold Wojtkiewicz, whose works of art remain a unique phe-
nomenon not only in Polish art but in that of Europe on the whole. In the world created by
Wojtkiewicz, we find ourselves surrounded by dolls, clowns, old folks and children alienated
amidst strange works of nature (fig. 5). Meanwhile, in Sérusier’s paintings we encounter a world
of Breton legends and tales, which the artist created by adapting and transforming Japanese
patterns. His works are decorative and distinguish themselves with their organic colour pal-
ette, stratification and austerity of expression. Wojtkiewicz painted three-dimensional scenes,

7 Maria Poprzęcka, Pochwała malarstwa. Studia z historii i teorii sztuki [In Praise of Painting. Studies of Art
History and Theory] (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2000), p. 244.
8 Clement Greenberg, Obrona modernizmu. Wybór esejów [In Defence of Modernism. Selected Essays],
trans. Grzegorz Dziamski, Maria Spik-Dziamska, compiled and edited by Grzegorz Dziamski (Krakow: Universitas,
2006), p. 77.