Eugene Wrzeszcz, Sunflowers

33.0 x 46.7cm - oil, cardboard signed l.d.: E. Wrzeszcz



Provenance:

The painting comes from the collection of Wladyslaw Szaniawski (1891-1975) - PhD in philosophy and natural sciences. Szaniawski worked as an associate professor at the University of Warsaw until the end of his life. He was a passionate mountaineer, photographer and hunter.

Eugeniusz Wrzeszcz (Kyiv Governorate 1851- Kyiv (?) 1917) - often called "the painter of Ukraine" - came from a borderland noble family. He graduated from the Gymnasium in Zhytomyr and then worked at a bank in Kyiv. He initially took up painting as an amateur, and later studied at the Kyiv Drawing School under Nikolai Murashko. In 1884 he briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and later traveled to Paris and Munich. He usually spent the summer months at his own estate near Kyiv, winters in Kyiv. He belonged to the Kyiv Society of Painters and other art associations, including the Society of South Russian Painters, the Kyiv Society of Art Exhibitions, the Kyiv Society of Encouragement. He often traveled abroad; in 1900 he made an extended trip to Italy. He painted primarily landscapes, with the highest praise for his "sensitive and affectionately painted" Ukrainian landscapes. He exhibited many times in Kyiv, as well as St. Petersburg He also exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (1887-1913/14) and the Krywult Salon (1889-1903) in Warsaw, where in 1903 he showed 80 canvases, including views from Ukraine, the Tatra Mountains and Italy, as well as still lifes. According to reviewers, the entire exhibition made "an impression of sincerity and freshness" fresh were "motifs from the steppes of mother Ukraine, from her furs, from under low thatched cottages planted with mallows, from ponds overgrown with witch hazel, from ravines and apiaries disappearing in the bush." The artist's paintings were popularized through numerous postcards.