Children in the Garden
W艂adys艂aw Podkowi艅ski (1866 to 1895) 路 1892
Two small children in white are busy with a watering can among flowerbeds, while a woman sits sewing on a bench in the shade of a tree. The whole garden shimmers: sunlight breaks through the leaves onto the path in blotches of yellow and violet, the flowers are dabs of red and pink, and the children's white dresses are painted in blue and lilac shadows. It is summer in the country and everything is in motion. It was painted in 1892, and it is one of the first truly Impressionist pictures made in Poland.
Podkowi艅ski had spent 1889 in Paris with his friend J贸zef Pankiewicz, where he saw Monet and Pissarro and came home converted. Look at the brushwork, short broken strokes of pure colour laid side by side, and at the absence of any black in the shadows. The subject is nothing but light falling in a garden, which Warsaw critics found frivolous. The painting was made at the estate of the painter's friends at Chrzesne near Warsaw, where he spent his summers, and the children were probably from the family there. The composition, with the figures set to one side and the path cutting diagonally through the picture, is casual in the manner of a snapshot.
Podkowi艅ski died of tuberculosis in 1895 at only twenty eight, having in his last years turned from sunny gardens to feverish Symbolist visions, above all the notorious Frenzy of Exultations, a naked woman on a black horse, which hangs in the National Museum in Krak贸w. This canvas shows the other side of the same short career, and it remains the museum's brightest room.
Did You Know? The Frenzy of Exultations, Podkowi艅ski's most famous painting, was slashed by the artist himself with a knife while on show in 1894; it survives, repaired, in Krak贸w.
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