The Charge in the Somosierra Gorge
Piotr Michałowski (1800 to 1855) · About 1837
A column of horsemen gallops uphill through a narrow mountain pass, their lances up, their horses' hooves lost in smoke and dust. There are no faces, no details of uniform, only the surge of the charge and the grey and gold of the light. The subject is the most famous feat of Polish arms in Napoleon's wars: on the thirtieth of November eighteen hundred and eight, the Polish light horse of the Imperial Guard charged four Spanish gun batteries up the Somosierra pass north of Madrid and took them in minutes, at terrible cost.
Piotr Michalowski was a Kraków aristocrat who painted for himself, never for exhibitions, and he is now recognised as the finest Polish painter of the Romantic age. He studied in Paris, admired Gericault and Delacroix, and painted horses better than any of them. Look at how loose the brushwork is: the charge is a single movement of paint, with riders and horses dissolving into each other, the smoke and the rock. Nothing is finished in the academic sense, and that is why it looks so modern. Michalowski painted the subject several times, and this is one of the largest and freest versions.
The painting came to the museum from the artist's family and hangs in the room of the Sukiennice gallery named after him, among his other horses, Napoleon on horseback and portraits of peasants. Compare it with the polished history paintings of Matejko a room away, made half a century later. Michalowski's charge is not a document but a memory of speed, and it has influenced Polish painters ever since.
Did You Know? Michałowski never exhibited during his lifetime and served as a local official; his paintings were only discovered by the public after his death.
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