Leon Wyczółkowski (1852 Huta Miastkowska near Garwolin - 1936 Warsaw), Pines in Palanga, 1908.

pastel, paper pasted on cardboard, 73.2 × 88.6 cm
Signed and dated p. d.: "LWyczół/908." (initials tied)

on the reverse, in the p. g. corner, opposite the composition, pencil inscription: 50 out (?)

"I am already in Palanga. Charming!"
Leon Wyczółkowski

"I am dependent on nature and without nature I cannot create. However, what is different is nature, and what is different is the symbolic treatment in art."
Leon Wyczółkowski, Letters and Memoirs, compiled by. M. Twardowska 1960 p. 164

Among others, Adam Mickiewicz, Wladyslaw Reymont, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Lucjan Rydel, Tadeusz Micinski and Leon Wyczółkowski vacationed in Palanga, a Baltic Lithuanian resort. Wyczółkowski visited the Tyszkiewicz family estate several times, to which belonged the Palazzo in Palanga, built in the late 19th century. The artist's first visit took place in 1908, as evidenced by his letter to Feliks Jasieński: "I am already in Palanga. Enchanting! What pine trees, until I am overcome with anxiety - in a few days I will get down to work" ("Leon Wyczółkowski. Letters and memoirs", compiled by. M. Twarowska, Wroclaw 1960, p. 255). The artist also mentions his stay at the Tyszkiewicz family in a letter to Franciszka Panek Wyczółkowska, also from that year. A few years before the artist's death, Adam Kleczkowski recorded his words about Palanga: "Palanga, a difficult motif in the sun, briefly, near the Tyszkiewicz palace, about 30 years ago" ("Leon Wyczółkowski, "Letters...", op.cit., p. 106). Wyczółkowski's stay in Palanga brought a whole series of works with seaside landscapes, which became evidence of the artist's fascination with the beauty of the sea element. In addition to a number of depictions of the view of the endless calm sea, scenes with coastal pine trees are characteristic. In the compositions showing these slender trees, with their strongly bent trunks and tangled crowns, one can clearly see inspiration from the traditions of Japanese art.

And it is from 1908 that the pastel presented in the auction catalog with a depiction of pine trees comes from. Clearly moved by the beauty of these trees, Wyczółkowski repeated this motif many times in oil paintings, pastels, many sketches or prints. The composition "Pines in Palanga" is distinguished primarily by its intense, saturated color palette. The artist depicted pine trees dancing in the wind in the glowing light of the afternoon sun. Anyway, it was the trees that were for Wyczółkowski "the object of the highest attachment and constant longing, the strongest creative stimulus" ("Leon Wyczółkowski, "Letters ...", op.cit., p. 183). He painted them from the 1880s to his last realizations, created a few months before his death in 1936. Spruces, pines, acacias, elm trees, maples, birches, guestrad, rogalin oaks or those of Bialowieza "were subjects of reflection, deeply felt in their semantic content. Their expression changed with the season, the weather or the time of day, reflected the moods and feelings of the artist himself" (W. Milewska, "Trees and forests in the work of Leon Wyczółkowski", [in:] "In the circle of Wyczółkowski", Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz, Bydgoszcz 2013, p. 65). As the artist said, "I am a child of the forest" ("Leon Wyczółkowski, Letters ..., op. cit. p. 130). and it was the trees that constituted the element of nature with which he identified the most.