oil, cardboard; 12.4 x 20 cm;
signed l.d.: JAN STANISŁAWSKI
on the reverse a confirmation of authenticity dated 28.VIII.1944 by Dr. Kazimierz Buczkowski.
The presented work "Sunset" by Jan Stanislawski perfectly reflects the artist's interest in the possibilities offered by color in painting and how it is affected by light. After 1901, the painter often takes up the theme of dusk, evening or night landscape with a glow illuminating the composition. During this time, the painter's form also changes and becomes much simpler. It becomes synthetic, which at the same time gives the opportunity to freely shape the space of the composition, already devoid of impressionistic tendencies, but all the time emphasizing the impressionistic - impressionistic character of the works. In the collection of the National Museum in Krakow there is a rich set of evening, night and morning landscapes, the titles of which directly direct to the depicted phenomenon for which the landscape - the place where it was painted - seems only a pretext: "Sunset" (MNK II-b-803 ), "Sun" (MNK II-b-845), "Evening" (MNK II-b-567 ), "Moonrise over Krzemionki" (MNK II-b-795), "After sunset" (MNK II-b-806).
Jan Stanislawski is an outstanding landscape painter, who in the second half of the 19th century made nature the main character of his works, enclosing landscapes full of light, elements and expression in the small formats of his paintings. The artist was a professor at Krakow's Academy of Fine Arts, where he led a studio of landscape painting, using a method of working outdoors that was revolutionary at the time. At the same time, he encouraged his students to study the power and beauty of nature. He did this himself by painting both its details, such as individual bodacias, mallows, lilacs, sunflowers, as well as by presenting the power of nature in broader frames, operating with a wide plane in compositions depicting the floodplains of the Dnieper River, cabbage fields, alleys of botanical parks, or, like the offered painting "Sunset," taking up the theme of dawn, dawn, dusk and nocturne. Devoid of animated creatures, the landscape, often captured in transition, at the turn of the seasons or documenting the daily cycle of nature, became a perfect subject for the artist. Jan Stanislawski was born in Olshan, Ukraine. He often returned to his native land, also going to the open air there, as evidenced by his paintings of small villages such as Smile, Korsun, Zofiiv or Pustovarnia (former Kyiv Gubernia).
The presented composition, shrouded in a luminous glow, reveals the artist's exceptional attention to the colors of the paintings and the study of light contained therein, which is expressed by Zenon Przesmycki Miriam reporting in the pages of Chimera magazine: "(...) this ruler of the entire range of tones, colors and lights - reveals himself, especially in recent times, as a capital synthesist who does not hesitate to sacrifice all details in order to achieve either epic dales and widths, or incredibly intense light ferias (...). Synthesis, by the way, is the entirety of Stanislavsky's work, to my surprise! The entire series of small-scale images, which are sometimes apparently a notation of only certain details and moments, leave in the viewer's soul not a memory of the sum of individual impressions, but a unified vision (...)".
In Stanislavsky's reflections of nature one can find not only light and color, but also an expression of emotion, a mood that directs the artist's painting towards symbolist tendencies in art. It seems that it is this atmosphere that is most easily captured precisely during a change, a solstice at sunset, for example. Perhaps aptly summarized the Young Poland landscape by Stefan Popowski, who wrote: "Today's painting does not reproduce, but first of all expresses nature, reflects not only its external shape, but also its soul - mood. (...) In particular, the nature of our country, with its simple lines and inexhaustible variety of light motifs, is an inexhaustible treasure for the painter, who is worthy to feel its subtle poetry."
(Elaborated. Based, among others, on: Anna Król, Picturing the World That Passes. Inspirations of Japanese art in the painting of Jan Stanislawski and his students, manggha Center for Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow 2007; Urszula Kozakowska-Zaucha, Jan Stanislawski, Cracow 2006; Zenon Przesmycki, Fine arts - Salon Krywulta, [in:] Chimera 1901, vol. I, z. 1, pp. 166-167; Plastic arts, Chimera 1901, no. 1, pp. 166-167).
