Signed p.d.: S. Witkiewicz | Zakopane | 1892.
Compare with:
- Bear in the Mountains (ink pen, paper, 46.3 x 30.1 cm, signed p.d.: PatKulowi | S. Witkiewicz), National Museum in Warsaw, id. Fig.Pol.161133 MNW.
Previously known only composition made by Witkiewicz with pen on paper (now in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw). Bear in the Tatra Mountains (pen drawing) was exhibited at the artist's posthumous exhibition in Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery in January 1927. The collection of the National Art Gallery also includes an unknown photograph showing the painter in his Zakopane studio, with the above-mentioned drawing among other works (photo opposite). It is therefore unusual to now be able to admire the artist's intention in its final version.
In his Tatra landscapes, Witkiewicz became a continuator of the ideas of Jan Nepomucen Glowacki and Aleksandr Kotsis. His extremely realistic painting was the result of his perceptiveness and gift for observation. Although he strongly advocated Impressionism in his theoretical writings, he himself remained faithful to naturalism. He did not recognize authority, despised rigid academicism and believed that only the phenomena of nature could provide a painting subject for a fine artist. Under the influence of Dr. Chałubiński, Witkiewicz succumbed to the power of the wild, unspoiled nature of the Tatra Mountains and the charm of Zakopane. He loved the Polish mountains above all else. In his works, which can also be seen in our painting, he used expressive drawing and paid great attention to the play of chiaroscuro. It was chiaroscuro that played a greater role in his painting than color. Witkiewicz believed that the poetry of his works lay in nature itself, not in the way he translated it into the language of shapes and colors.
The appearance on the market of a painting from the early 1890s is a significant event. Many works from this period were destroyed at the end of 1893, during the fire of "Jadwiniowka" (the villa built by Dr. Chałubiński for his daughter Jadwiga in 1885, nota bene the only "non-mountainous" building in Zakopane worthy of attention, according to Witkiewicz), which housed the artist's studio.
It is therefore an unusual treat for collectors.
Stanislaw Witkiewicz - painter, writer, prominent art theorist and critic, creator of the "Zakopane style" in architecture and ornamentation, father of Stanislaw Ignacy "Witkacy". After a stay in Tomsk, where - for his participation in the January Uprising - his family was in exile and where he studied drawing with the lithographer J. Volkmar Fleck, he took up studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg (1868-1871). In 1871 he went to Munich and briefly studied at the Academy under H. Anschütz. After returning to Poland (1873), he settled in Warsaw. He shared a painting studio at the Hotel Europejski with his friends - J. Chelmonski, A. Chmielowski and A. Piotrowski. At that time he also worked as an art director for the magazine "Wanderer". In 1880-82 he stayed in Munich, Marienbad and Meran. From 1890 he lived in Zakopane. Progressive lung disease caused him to spend the last years of his life in sanatorium conditions in Lovran, Istria. A promoter of realism in art, he tried to paint according to the theoretical assumptions of this direction. He created genre paintings, seascapes and Tatra landscapes, as well as scenes from the January Uprising, based on his childhood memories, and, less frequently, portraits.
