World Children's Day

On Children's Day we wish you enjoyable and enlightening moments with art, of course, at the National Musum in Szczecin. By the way, meet the kids from the paintings in our collection!

See more of our collection at www.wmuzeach.pl

 

1

Tadeusz Makowski (1882–1932)
Girl Wearing a Hat, ca. 1928
oil, 68 cm x 49 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin

In years 1918–1922 Tadeusz Makowski travelled to Auvergne, which aroused his strong interest in folk art. Since then, children have appeared among the main topics chosen by him. They also inspired the artist to formulate his creative attitude. He wanted to paint simplified forms like a child not punished for bad drawing. He looked for the naivety and the honesty it entails. Thus, Makowski combined cubism, folk and children's art and at the same time he referred to old Dutch painting. The last period of the painter's activity lasted from 1928 to 1932. At that time, he most often painted carnival and theatrical scenes. He created, among others, a series of works creating a the gallery of representatives of various professions. The painting, created at the beginning of this period, is one of numerous representations of girls in hats. Like many works from this period, it is kept in warm tones. The simplified image shows the ability to make the presented characters unreal. They become charcters of universal stories and theatrical scenes. The artist repeated elements of his paintings. In the same year, another portrait of a girl wearing a headdress was created: Nude Girl in a Blue Cap (1928), while Girl with a Red Cheek (1925) shows a figure wearing almost the same blouse, although the canvas is painted in a slightly different convention.

By Beata Małgorzata Wolska

 

 

 

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Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907)
Girl's Head, 1894
papr, pastels, 38x24,5 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin 

Stanisław Wyspiański - dramatist, painter, designer of utility forms, recognized during his lifetime as the "fourth bard", inheriting the legacy of the great Polish poets-prophets (Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński), he was born in the house of sculptor Franciszek Wyspiański. His mother, Maria née Rogowska, orphaned her seven-year-old son, who was taken over by his uncle Kazimierz and Joanna (Janina) Stankiewicz. In the bilingual Polish-German St. Anne School in Cracow, young Stanisław became interested in history, art, theatre and Greco-Roman antiquity. Before receiving his secondary school leaving examination certificate, he enrolled as an extraordinary student at the local School of Fine Arts. After graduating from secondary school (1887), he began studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University, continuing his practical training in painting. This is how he became a disciple of Jan Matejko, known as the greatest national artist since the Romantic era, the first to shift public interest from Polish literature to the visual arts. Wyspiański combined these two fields, developing in the first decade of the 20th century the Cracow version of the "total work" (German: Gesamtkunstwerk). He completed his painting studies at the Académie Colarossi in Paris (1891–1894). Along the great forms - dramatic texts, frescoes, architectural and stage designs and furnishings for public utility interiors, TUUUUUUU he continued to create minor works during all his lifetime. They included poetry, applied graphics and, especially, portraits. In the latter field, he became a virtuoso of the pastel technique and an inquisitive documentalist of the image and psyche of the model. It was usually possible thanks to a free, independent choice of the models from among the closest friends of the time - bohemians, schoolmates, friends, their and his own children. This group includes an early work from the Szczecin collection, created five years before Wyspiański's marriage to Teodora Teofila Pytko, in the year of the birth of their first daughter Helenka.

By Szymon Piotr Kubiak

 

 

 

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Stanisław Dębicki (1866–1924)
Little Rabbi, 1885
oil, 40 cm x 32 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin 

Stanisław Dębicki was a painter and book illustrator. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna by Christian Griepenkerl (1881-1884), then he was a disciple of Władysław Łuszczkiewicz at the School of Fine Arts in Cracow, then again he studied in Vienna and in 1884 in Munich by Sándor (Alexander von) Wagner at the Academy, he also took private lessons from Paul Nauen. After returning to Poland, he worked for several years as a teacher at the School of Ceramics Industry in Kołomyja (Kolomyia, present Ukraine; 1886–1890). During this period, he travelled a lot around the area, to towns and villages such as Delatyn, Mikuliczyn, Żabie, Tyszkowce, which resulted in numerous sketches and notes. In years 1890–1891 he lived in Paris and attended the Académie Colarossi. Then he moved to Lviv, and in 1909 he moved to Cracow, where, after the death of Stanisław Wyspiański, he took the chair of decorative painting at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Little Rabbi, a painting created in 1885, donated to the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin in 1948, is one of the examples of works from the early period when Dębicki lived in Kołomyja, before he started working as a teacher at the local school. The surroundings of this town and its residents frquently became models for the artist's works. It needs to be mentionned that it was an ethnically diverse environment. Apart from the Ukrainians, the area was inhabited by Ruthenians, Armenians and Jews.

Little Rabbi is an oil portrait sketch depicting a bust of a boy wearing a yarmulke, facing the viewer en trois quarts. His eyes are closed and his mouth seem as if he is whispering or humming something, perhaps a prayer. Free, delicate brush strokes are visible in the image. A muted palette of colours was used in shades of brown, purple and gray. The face is light, which was obtained by using white which contrasts with the black yarmulke. The artist focuses on emphasizing the facial expression and psyche of the portrayed one, which was the result of a careful analysis of the character.

This is not the only painting depicting a Jewish boy in Dębicki's output. For example, there is a Little Rabbi in the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław.

By Beata Małgorzata Wolska

 

 

 

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Ludwik de Laveaux (1868–1894)
Girl, 1887
oil 48 cm x 40.5 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin

Stanisław Ludwik de Laveaux is one of those artists whose death is considered definitely premature (1868–1894). He was extraordinarily talented. During his short life, he created works that are certainly worth remembering. In years 1884–1886 and 1889–1890 he studied at the studio of Józef Mehoffer at the Cracow School of Fine Arts. From 1886 to 1888, he studied painting by Otto Seitz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After graduating in 1890, he moved to Paris for good.

During his stay in his homeland, together with Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Wincent Wodzinowski and Stanisław Radziejowski, he took part in open-air workshops, during which the artists jointly developed their fascination of folk culture. This has influenced the artist's work from the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin. The painting entitled Girl (also known as Girl with Catkins and Girl with a Palm Branch) was painted in 1887, when de Laveaux was studying in Munich. It is an image of a small village girl in profile, holding a traditional "palm branch" in her hand. The picture, although painted in Bavaria, shows a memory from Cracow related to the customs of Palm Sunday. It is a realistic portrait - a girl in a folk costume is depicted against a neutral background. An illuminated face with a rather serious expression focuses the viewer's attention. She is not a carefree child, but rather a young woman who, thanks to her clothes among others, maintains the Polish tradition. This is one of the gestures of hope for regaining independence, which was part of the tendency to perpetuate ludic rites by the representatives of Young Poland. Ludwik de Laveaux went down in history not only with his works, but also as a character appearing in "The Wedding", a drama by Wyspiański - it was he who was portrayed as a ghost in a parade of phantoms (scene V, act II).

By Beata Małgorzata Wolska

 

 

 

5

Carl August Ludwig Most (1807–1883)
Portrait of Auguste Schiffmann in Her Childhood, 1835
oil, 52 cm x 36 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin 

The painting, already present in the pre-war museum collection records, depicts the daughter of August Ferdinand Schiffmann, a merchant from Szczecin. By showing the girl en face, August Ludwig Most, the most outstanding representative of the Biedermeier in Szczecin, focused on presenting the face of the several-year-old model. He realistically depicted the delicate features of the girl's face, and in a keen look combined with a slight smile he was able to express her vivid nature and curiosity about the world. A festive outfit - a snow-white dress with a wide, lace collar, a pink headband over the forehead, woven into the hair along the temples, long earrings made of transparent rock crystal - testify to the representative purpose of the image. The character of the work is also confirmed by the preserved original, richly decorated frame. The portraits were as eagerly created by Most as the genre scenes. The artist showed children with particular sensitivity, skillfully depicting not only their superficiality, but also their psyche, as exemplified by the Szczecin image of Auguste Schiffmann, a few years old, after her later wedding named Kittel.

By Dariusz Kacprzak

 

 

 

6

Bela Czóbel (1883–1976)
Portrait of a Girl, between 1910 and 1925
oil, 79.5 cm x 57.5 cm
The National Museum in Szczecin

The individual style of Hungarian artist Béla Czóbel was shaped by his education and mainly outdoor painting experience of three centres: the Nagybánya (Baia Mare) art colony in Romania (studies by Béla Iványi Grünwald), the Royal-Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (studies in the studios of Wilhelm von Diez and Ludwig Herterich) and Académie Julian in Paris (studies at the studio of Jean Paul Laurens). It gradually evolved under the influence of the Post-Impressionists, then the Fauvists and the Jugendstil, later it changed in the spirit of German Expressionism, and in the 1930s it followed the convention of theartists of the École de Paris. Apart from landscapes, city views and indoor genre scenes, the main part of his output are portraits. Czóbel spent several years of his life in Berlin (1919–1925), where he made artistic friendships with, among others, Ludwig Kirchner, Eric Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The Portrait of a Girl in a Red Beret, purchased for the pre-war collection of the City Museum in Szczecin, comes from this period. The picture is painted with wide brush strokes, with a clear emphasis on the painter's gesture. Flat patches of intense colours are limited by a distinctly dark outline. The work from Szczecin is part of the group of Czóbel's portraits, which echo the paintings of French Fauvism and German Expressionists from the Die Brücke circle, interpreted by him.

By Dariusz Kacprzak