Wojciech Gerson, LANDSCAPE, 1853

48.6 x 60.8cm - oil, doubled canvas

Signed p.d.: W Gerson 1853

On the reverse on the duplicated canvas a sticker of the Jacek Malczewski Museum (print): Jacek Malczewski MUSEUM | Rynek 11 | 26-600 RADOM | tel. (0-48) 36-243-29 | Gallery of Polish Painting | September 2000 - April 2001 | Wojciech Gerson | Landscape | privately owned; below the inscription: Brzegi Wisły | Painted: | Wojciech Gerson. 1853 r.

On the lower border of the frame a sticker of a gallery in Krakow; next to it an inventory sticker (print, pen): AUTHOR Wojciech | Gerson | TITLE OF WORK "Landscape" | TECHNIQUE oil, canvas | DIMENSIONS 49 x 61 cm | INW Dep. no. 1111/311/2003.



According to the list of works included in Gerson's notebook, in 1853 the artist painted a picture entitled View from the shore near Drohiczyn at sunset. This is the only landscape mentioned that dates to that year, but the inscription on the back of the painting, placed on a duplicate canvas, points to the banks of the Vistula River. The view of the Vistula may also be supported by the fact that the artist traveled down the Vistula River in 1853, wandering through Mazovia and Kuyavia.



Gerson's landscape paintings are characterized by a realism that is unusual for the time. Since his early student years at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, the artist made numerous walking tours of the country. With ethnographic precision, he documented the life of the Polish countryside and poured his admiration for the Polish landscape onto his canvases. Jozef Chelmonski - a prominent pupil of Gerson - considered landscape to be the greatest achievement in the master's creative career. He wrote: I will begin with landscapes as those works that give Gerson the right to be counted among the first-rate painters. When Gerson began his artistic activity, in almost all of Europe landscapes were understood very ineptly; the concept of the moment in a painting was almost unknown. There is nothing to say about what was in this era in our country either. And in Paris, too, the period of great landscape painters was just beginning at that time, such as Daubigny, Rousseau, Troyon, Corot, Jules Breton and so on. [...] Gerson's works cut themselves off eminently from everything that was then in all our painting. [...] The faint color of which he was accused, being a characteristic feature of his talent, was deliberately sought by him to bring out the effect of immersion of objects, as: trees, human figures, etc. in the atmosphere. And this is all the more to Gerson's credit, since he did it alone for those times, without borrowing it from anyone.



Image exhibited and reproduced in:

- Gallery of Polish Painting of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Jacek Malczewski Museum in Radom, IX 2000 - IV 2001;
- S. Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska, Zabrze Collection. Painting and Drawing of the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Cracow 2005, p. 6, il. s. 7.

Wojciech Gerson (Warsaw 1831 - Warsaw 1901) painter, pedagogue; from 1844 to 1851 he studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts under Jan Feliks Piwarski, Christian Breslauer and Marcin Zaleski, and from 1853 to 1855 at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1856 he went to Paris, where he still studied in the studio of Leon Cogniet and studied independently in museums. In 1858, after returning to Warsaw, he developed extensive artistic and public activities. In 1860 he was one of the founders of the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. He taught painting and drawing at the Warsaw Drawing Class and in his own studio, educating several generations of painters. His students included Chełmoński, Wyczółkowski, Stanisławski, Podkowiński and Pankiewicz. In 1878 he received the title of professor at the St. Petersburg Academy. He traveled abroad - to Berlin, Italy, Vienna, Prague and several times to Paris. He traveled extensively around the country, and was especially frequent and eager to go to the Tatra Mountains. He painted genre country scenes, portraits, historical and religious paintings and landscapes - including many Tatra landscapes.