Dimensions: 56 x 46.5 cm
signed lower right: 'J. Pankiewicz'
Provenance
private collection, Poland-Germany, since the 1970s
Bibliography
Józef Pankiewicz (1866–1940). Life and Work. The Artist on the 140th Anniversary of His Birth, exhibition catalog, ed. Elżbieta Charazińska, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 2006, p. 86 (ill.), cat. no. I/184
Biography
In 1884–85, he studied at the Drawing Class in Warsaw under Wojciech Gerson and Aleksander Kamiński; then, together with Władysław Podkowiński, he traveled to St. Petersburg to study on a scholarship at the local Academy of Fine Arts from 1885 to 1886. In 1889, both artists traveled to Paris; there, his painting “Vegetable Market on the Square Behind the Iron Gate” (1888) was awarded a silver medal at the Universal Exposition. Having become acquainted with the works of the Impressionists upon his return to Warsaw in 1890, he sought to adapt French painting trends to his native soil. "Flower Market in Front of St. Madeleine Church in Paris" (1890), (1890), which drew on Impressionism, was met with a negative reception by Polish critics and the public, who advised the painter to see an eye doctor. In the following years, the artist’s work remained influenced by Symbolism—he created atmospheric nocturnes with a dark, almost monochromatic color palette: Old Town Square in Warsaw at Night (1892), A Horse-Drawn Carriage at Night (1896), Swans in Saski Garden (1896), and Park in Duboj (1897). Inspired, among other things, by the work of James Whistler, he created a series of atmospheric portraits, including *Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress* (1897), Portrait of Mrs. Oderfeld with Her Daughter (1897, awarded a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris). In 1897, he became a member of the Kraków-based Society of Polish Artists “Sztuka.” Between 1897 and 1906, he traveled throughout Western Europe, visiting the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, England, Germany, and France. Subsequent summer visits to France—beginning in 1908, when he befriended, among others, Pierre Bonnard and Félix Fénéon—resulted in a series of paintings and etchings depicting views of Concarneau, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, Collioure, Saint-Tropez, Vernon, and Giverny. The painting on display dates from this period of the artist’s career. In 1906, he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. This is evidenced, among other things, by a series of still lifes, including the most outstanding one, *Still Life with Fruit and a Knife* (1909). He spent the war years of 1914–19 in Spain, where he befriended Robert Delaunay, to whom he owes his stylistic shift. The canvases of his “Spanish period” are characterized by geometric forms (the influence of Cubism) and the intensity of flatly applied colors—the influence of Fauvism. In the 1920s, he initiated the Polish Colorism movement, which drew on the work of the French Post-Impressionists. As an educator, he served as a mentor to a group of painters and graphic artists united in the Paris Committee, colloquially known as the “Kapists.” Its members included, among others, Jan Cybis, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Józef Czapski, Zygmunt Waliszewski, and Piotr Potworowski. In 1923, he returned to his position as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and from 1925 onward, he headed the academy’s branch in Paris. The postwar years brought another change in Pankiewicz’s style. He gradually moved away from pure, intense, decorative color in favor of tonal painting, which offered an objective vision of reality. A frequent subject of the painter’s postwar works are “landscapes with fluffy tree canopies” in the vicinity of Sanary, Cassis, and La Ciotat.
