Leon Wyczółkowski, PORTRET MARTY NAZIEMSKA

60.5 x 51.0 cm - watercolor, pencil, paper watercolor, lavage, pencil, paper, 60.5 x 51 cm

signed twice l.g.: LWyczół

Provenance: According to the family of the portrayed, Marta Naziemska-Rawczyńska (1894-1983), a professor at the Cracow Institute of Music, was an acquaintance of Leon Wyczółkowski. After her death, the painting passed into the possession of the family.

Leon Wyczółkowski gained great popularity as a portraitist, as Roman Konik writes: Wyczółkowski's popularity as a portraitist was often the painter's bane. There were times in his life when he had to refuse to paint portraits, because if he accepted all commissions, he would paint nothing but portraits (R. Konik, Leon Wyczółkowski. Portrait of a Painter, published by Take Care, Bydgoszcz 2019, p. 187). Wyczółkowski painted many portraits. Despite the fact that they were a source of income, not all commissions he undertook; for they were very time-consuming works, as the artist tried to approach each one individually. In order to accurately capture the psychology of the model, he spent a lot of time on prior contact, wanting to get to know the personality of the portrayed, observe his gestures, facial expressions. He was not satisfied with the works created in a hurry, without adequate preparation, and therefore without deepening the psychology of the model, moreover, they were his reproach.

The artist took a completely different approach to portraits of friends and acquaintances, people close to him. It was also not uncommon for him himself to propose to the person who inspired him to paint his likeness: the face of an acquaintance or friend in a portrait then became not only an image to be recognized, but a separate world was contained in the figure, with shared memories, stories, jokes and experienced worries. Perhaps this is why the best portraits from under the artist's brush or pencil are those of people the artist knew well (R. Konik, op. cit., p. 190).

When painting Miss Marta Naziemska, the artist used a treatment that he also successfully applied in other female images; both the color scheme and the summation of the woman's ephemeral silhouette focus the eye on her face. The dark patch of hair contrasts sharply with the porcelain white of her complexion and blue eyes with a melancholy look. The convention of representation here has been adapted to the character of the model, whom we see as a delicate, sensitive woman. Narrowing the range of colors and limiting the means of expression, the artist achieved an excellent balance between sketchiness and realistic representation of the model, at the same time rendering her inner energy and emotionality.

Leon Wyczółkowski (Huta Miastkowska near Siedlce 1852 - Warsaw 1936) - painter, graphic artist and educator, was one of the most outstanding Polish artists creating at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He began his artistic studies at the Warsaw Drawing Class under Wojciech Gerson and Aleksander Kaminski (1869-1873), then continued them at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Aleksander Wagner (1875-1877), in Cracow under Jan Matejko (1877/78) and during two trips to Paris (1878 and 1889). After his studies, he settled in Lviv and later moved to Warsaw. He spent the years 1883-1893 traveling in Ukraine and Podolia. In 1895 he moved to Cracow appointed as a lecturer at the School of Fine Arts there. In the following years he traveled extensively - to Italy, France, Spain, Holland, England. He was one of the founding members of the Society of Polish Artists "Art". He exhibited a lot both at home and abroad. He spent the years 1929-1936 in Poznań and Gościeradz, commuting to Warsaw, where (from 1934) he held the chair of graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts. He painted landscapes, portraits, genre scenes, still lifes and flowers. He readily used pastel and watercolor techniques, was an accomplished printmaker, and was also involved in sculpture.