Stanislaw MASŁOWSKI

MUSICIAN Watercolor, pencil, paper 55.7 x 90.5 cm (illus. p-p)

Signed l.d.: STANISŁAW MASŁOWSKI.

Condition: numerous folds, paper bends

Stanislaw MASŁOWSKI

1853 -1926

He was a student of W.Gerson and A.Kamienski at the Warsaw Drawing Class. After graduation, he lived permanently in Warsaw, from where he went on annual plein-air painting trips, including to Ukraine in 1875-1886. His fascination with the local landscape and folklore caused him to paint many genre paintings with figures of Cossacks at that time. In 1886 he stayed in Munich; about 1900 he traveled several times to Italy and Paris; in 1912 he traveled to Sicily and Tunis. After 1903, he spent much of his time in Wola Rafałowska, near Warsaw. In addition to oil painting, he practiced watercolor and reached true mastery in this difficult technique. In his watercolor-painted landscapes - realistic and at the same time decorative - he gave, in his own words, "something of a synthesis of the Polish landscape."

The watercolor is one of the studies for the oil painting Owczarek, painted by Maslowski in 1875, reproduced in Tygodnik Ilustrowany in 1882, H2, p. 233.

After graduating from the Drawing Class in 1875, Maslowski was associated with a group of Warsaw realist painters that included: J.Chełmoński, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Adam Chmielowski, who had a joint studio at the Hotel Europejski in Warsaw. Owczarek was his first painting, "which was born in the Europejski Hotel," in the same year as Chełmoński's Babie Lato and Night Watchman.

A description of the painting, burned during World War II, was left by the artist's son, Maciej Maslowski: "I knew Owczarek well from autopsy. It was a medium-sized very carefully finished oil painting, smoothly, unpretentiously painted, harmonized in its local colors. It still had no small amount of naiveté, but also some charm. It had pedantically faithful details of folk costume, faithful studies of plants and a typical modest Polish landscape with a line of villages on the horizon, plenty of air and successfully resolved lighting of a sunny day with a sky lightly streaked with clouds. It was done [...] on the basis of numerous notes " (H. Cękalska- Borowska, Wieś w malarstwie i rysunku naszych artystów, Warsaw, 1969, p. 266, quotes after M. Masłowski, Stanisław Masłowski, Materials for a biography and creativity , Wroclaw 1957).

Asking price 4900

Estimate 6000 - 7000