Aleksander Gierymski – the great poet of light
Dr Maria Wąchała-Skindzier
Disregarded during his lifetime and still overshadowed by his great brother Maksymilian, Aleksander Gierymski is now highly respected in Poland. Considered a leading Polish realist and art reformer, he made extraordinary use of light in his paintings.
Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901) was one of the most pursuing artists of the 19th century and one of the most travelled Polish painters of the time. He constantly confronted his work with what could be seen in the leading European galleries, especially in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Rome and Venice. Together with his brother, the equally famous painter Maksymilian (1846-1874), he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, in the renowned studio of Karl von Piloty. There, however, he was considered an eccentric, an oddity, who painted differently to Maksymilian: too modern for what was usual in the Munich school.
Sandmen, 1887 National Museum in Warsaw./pl.wikipedia.org/wiki
Although Aleksander Gierymski is now regarded as one of the leading realist painters, this was not always the case. Throughout his life, Gierymski struggled with the feeling of being ‘the other’ – implicitly inferior, living in the shadow of his famous brother. Gierymski’s life was one of the most miserable, lonely and tormented. (…) He was outspoken to the point of brutality and cynicism, and at the same time secretive and shy to the point of fear,’ wrote Stanisław Witkiewicz.
Despite his many travels, it was in his native city of Warsaw that Aleksander Gierymski produced his most outstanding and best-known works. He spent the years 1879-1888 there as an adult, looking for subjects in the immediate, everyday world. He was fascinated by districts such as Powiśle, Solec and the Old Town. Jewess with Oranges, Gate in the Old Town, Solec Harbour, Feast of Trumpets, and Sandmen are all great works from the Warsaw period that fascinate us today. At the time, however, they were not well understood by Polish society. Misunderstood and unappreciated in his homeland, and deprived of his means of support, the artist left Warsaw in 1888. He returned to Munich. Then came Paris and the Impressionist fascination with light and colour. He made a brief appearance in Krakow, where he produced the remarkable Boy with a Sheaf and Peasant’s Coffin. After 1895, his connection with his country finally broke. He spent the last years of his life in Italy. He described himself as ‘a member of a wandering community of people without a permanent home.’
The cosmopolitan nature of Gierymski’s work and his conscious rejection of the primacy of historicism in art made him an enemy of his 19th-century epigones, including Jan Matejko. This included criticising the famous Feast of Trumpets of 1884, unveiled on Polish soil in 1888 at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. Matejko, who was at the height of his fame, considered this work to be ‘foreign thoughtlessness’. However, many intellectuals and artists recognised Gierymski’s genius and saw it as a harbinger of change in art. Bolesław Prus, Stanisław Witkiewicz and later Józef Czapski saw in Gierymski the founder of a new trend, a reformer, the creator of a new artistic language.
Photography became a very important medium for Gierymski. He ordered a camera and learned to use it. Working as a draughtsman and illustrator, he was sensitive to detail and photography guaranteed accuracy. It was also an auxiliary tool for landscape work. It was photography that suggested new subjects to Gierymski, including the everyday, simplicity and its ingenuity.
Aleksander Gierymski-Jewess with Oranges
Gierymski’s innovative spirit, his fascination with light and his ability to render it on canvas are most fully reflected in Jewess with Oranges of 1881. It was painted in Warsaw. Gierymski prepared very carefully for the subject. He made dozens of sketches from nature and oil studies. One of his inspirations was a photograph by Konrad Brandel, entitled Fruit Handler. Jewish Woman Selling Lemons, dated around 1879. Both works are in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw. The canvas Jewess with Oranges depicts an old Jewish woman holding two wicker baskets. Brightly coloured oranges can be seen in one of the baskets. In the background, the artist has captured the panorama of the Vistula escarpment behind a light mist from the direction of Powiśle. The light is particularly striking. There is a subtle contrast between the colours of the fruit and the whole range of greys, whites, beiges and browns of the Jewish woman’s dress. The painting is also one of the most important Judaica in the history of Polish painting. Interestingly, Gierymski was pleased with the effect of his work, which was rare for him.
‘You know how we artists are – always chasing what’s far away from us – approaching what’s already ours – ignoring and over and over again, on and on without stopping. Our eyes are always fixed on the same thing; we do not rest even when our strength is gone (…)’, he wrote in one of his letters. His great creativity was accompanied by depression, aggravated by the death of his close friend Bruno Abakanowicz in 1900. The painter sank deeper and deeper into himself. To help him, the Polish sculptor Antoni Madeyski took him to his home in Rome. This did not help much. Gierymski died in early March 1901 in a psychiatric hospital in Rome. He was buried in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome.
Peasant Trauma (1894-1895)/pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/
His death deeply moved the Polish artistic community. It was the culmination of a myth about the fate of the artist – lonely and unusually sensitive, incompatible with reality, without his place on earth. Gierymski, ‘the great poet of light’, was an extreme, tragic, paradoxical figure. Paradoxical because, despite the harshness of his life, he has now gained great recognition. Today he is considered the leading Polish realist, an art reformer who saw many retrospectives and whose works are timeless. They are exhibited in the biggest Polish museums and are eagerly reproduced and discussed.
Dr Maria Wąchała-Skindzier
Doctor of humanities in the field of history, museologist, curator of exhibitions, author of scenarios for museum lessons, historical walks, curatorial tours. In 2016-2019, she was the head of the Nowa Huta branch of the Museum of Krakow. Currently she works at the Museum of Photography in Krakow.
Source: DlaPolonii.pl
