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Piotr Michałowski
To his contemporaries, Piotr Michałowski (1800–1855) stood as
a model of a wise citizen, good farmer and state offi cial. His social
activity, in particular his philanthropy, were especially admired. Obviously, everyone knew that he painted, and some even were
able to appreciate his works, but nobody would treat this activity as
anything other than a private passion, an amateur pastime practiced
at home. Only in the late 19th century was the phenomenon of his
art fi nally discovered, and Michałowski was recognised as the most
eminent painter of Polish Romanticism, comparable even to the
European artistic celebrities of the era.
The painter came from a wealthy noble family. He had received
versatile education, having studied exact and natural science,
mathematics, classical and oriental philology as well as law. He
travelled frequently, both around Poland and Europe, extending
his knowledge and carefully studying the arts in the museums
visited. During the November Uprising, he was in charge of the
manufacture of munitions for the fi ghting Poles and following the fall
of the Uprising he emigrated to Paris. There he turned to painting,
the basics of which he had mastered already as an adolescent by
taking classes with a number of Krakow-based painters. In Paris,
he attended the classes of battle scene painters and maintained
contacts with the artists from the circle of Théodore Géricault. He
also conducted independent studies, visiting the Louvre and local
slaughter houses, to learn the anatomy of horses. Initially, he mainly
painted watercolours, presenting horse-drawn carriages. With time
he made his fi rst sculpting attempts and also started to use in his
painting the oil technique more frequently. After his return to Krakow
in 1835, he continued to create the works of art until the end of his
life, while simultaneously managing the model land estates of
Krzyżtoporzyce and Bolestraszyce, and travelling around Europe. In
the last years of his life he held important administrative posts.
It is diffi cult to put the creative output of Piotr Michałowski in
chronological order: he did not put dates on his works and re-visited
many ideas and themes repeatedly. Also, he would often paint new
works over previous studies, whose fragments can sometimes be
discerned under layers of paint. Among the scarce thematic plots
undertaken by the artist, the Napoleonic period remains the major
one, exceeding in number references to the November Uprising
and scenes from distant history. Michałowski painted the Battle of
Samosierra in a variety of aspects from the 1830s till the end of his
life, presenting groups of horsemen both in horizontal and vertical
layouts. He created a number of equestrian portraits of Napoleon,
with the monumental Napoleon on a Grey Horse crowning the
collection. In the years 1845–1848, his greatest physiognomy studies
were created – Peasant, Seńko, Cardinal, as well as portraits of Jews
and numerous presentations of knights, Lisowczyk soldiers and
hetmans (military commanders). Towards the end of his life, despite
numerous duties and poor health, Michałowski reached the heights of synthetic form of painting and mastery in the use of colours,
an example of which are the equestrian portraits of his children: Blue
Boy and Amazon.
Michałowski practically never exhibited his works in public. His art
was shaped by the works of great masters, which he remembered in
great detail from the museums and later copied from drawings. He
owed the most to the inspiration provided by the painting of Velázquez,
which was manifested in the dominant role of colour over other means
of artistic expression. By giving up on the contour, he constructed
the form suggestively with the sole use of patches – a concrete and
material form, fi nding its equivalent in nature. The movement of
a horse or the dust agitated by a cavalcade of horsemen, the shape of
a human silhouette or the look in the eyes of a person being painted
refl ect the insight gained by close observation. Light hues, vibrating or
muted, applied with bold but infallible brush strokes, allow shapes to
emerge from darkness, making them visible as if in a sudden gleam
of light. This adds internal dynamics of sorts to even fully static
compositions. That is why, in encountering Michałowski’s paintings,
one sees something that is eternally vivid and alive, a vision that
appears to be created in front of our very own eyes.
Urszula Makowska
Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences