Dimensions: 61 x 50 cm
Signed p.d.: 'WSlewinski'.
On the lower beam of the painting loom, a note made by the artist's monographer, Władysława Jaworska: 'Rocky ocean shore in Brittany'.
Origins
Polswiss Art auction house, December 2015
private collection, Poland
DESA Unicum, October 2020
private collection, Poland
Literature
Waldemar Odorowski, Władysław Ślewiński. From Pont Aven to Kazimierz, Kaziemierz Dolny 2009, p. 39 (il.).
Biography
Władysław Ślewiński came from a landed, Mazovian family. In 1875 he began his education at an agricultural school in Radom. He briefly attended Wojciech Gerson's Drawing School in Warsaw, probably at the urging of his relative Jozef Chelmonski. He managed the Pilaszkowice estate in the Lublin region inherited from his mother, which he brought to financial ruin. In the rush of 1888, he left Poland for Paris, escaping the sequester of the Internal Revenue Service. He quickly found his way into the circle of modern French art: he studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, and hung out among the artistic bohemians who gathered at the cremerie Chez Madame Charlotte in Montparnassie. Among his acquaintances were Paul Gauguin, Alphonse Mucha and August Strindberg. At the 1889 Synthetist exhibition at Café Volpini, he became acquainted with the circle and art of Gauguin's disciples. He befriended the artist and in 1889-96 traveled to Pont-Aven in Brittany, joining the ranks of the art colony there. He married the Russian painter Eugenia Shevtsova. From 1896 he lived in Le Pouldu in Brittany. The years 1905-10 mark the artist's stay in Poland: there is an exhibition of his works in Warsaw's Aleksander Krywult Salon, Ślewiński goes to Cracow, stays in Poronin, creating within the local art colony centered around Jan Kasprowicz, and establishes an art school on Polna Street in Warsaw. In 1910 he left Poland and for the rest of his life lived in a house called "castle" in Doëlan, Brittany. Influenced by Gauguin and the syntheticism of the Pont-Aven school, Ślewiński created a personal painting formula situated within the painting of European Symbolism. In the history of Polish art, his painting is classified as part of Young Poland. Ślewiński practiced almost exclusively oil painting - he created intimate still lifes, portraits, landscapes. A unique phenomenon in his oeuvre is a series of seascapes from the Breton coast, executed since the 1890s.
