Jozef Chelmonski - National Museum, Warsaw

 Salvete Omnes,

auriga, wagon driver - woznica

a short entry -
National Mseum of Arts in Warsaw, Poland holds this special exhibit  - a showcase of Jozef Chelmonski's painting.

there was no music like the folk music, Chopin's mazurkas etc came from this tradition

this temporary exhibit ends on January 26, 2025 and who knows when they gonna have another one. 

So if you are in Warsaw, Poland, these coming weeks perhaps make a trip to the museum, right in the heart of Warsaw, near the Poniatowski Bridge on the Vistula (Wisla) River.

Nota bene there will be a lecture on the 19th of December 2024 about the carriages and sleigh, horse tack and traveling during the times of Jozef Chelmonski.

Polish Jewish wagon driver 

old master of Mazowsze is collectible in Poland and without, eg Sotheby's Chelmonski - Four Horse Wagon on a Rainy Day. or Lempertz. 

my favorite non-equestrian painting of Chelmonski - it remainds of the woods of my childhood in Lowicz Masovia (Mazowsze)

Valete

January Uprising -January 22, 1863-2023

 Salvete Omnes,

 

Max Giermyski was a participant of the Uprising

Map of sites of battles, encounters, ambushes and scrimmages during the Uprising

the last partizan - priest Stanislaw Brzoska

Today there is one sad anniversary - the January Uprising 1863 - a rebellion of Polish hothead patriots, men of honor and useful idiots against the Russian Empire. Without international support (like in case of Turkey during the Crimean War), without proper arms (using scythes as close combat pole weapon, and hunting shotguns and muskets)

 

 and with partisan logistics, and without wide national support (egthe peasants did not support widely this Uprising, they actually were neutral or even hostile ) and with the entire Imperial army weight and might, this motley of partisan units and many different leaders and bad commanders could not win any victory.

In return the Urpising brought nothing but suffering and loss of lives (and plenty of new cemeteries) , loss of entire wealth &  landed estates amassed by the previous generations and also the acute loss of any possibility for change of Polish futures within the empire (only Japanese War of 1905 and World War I brought changes and final restitution of Poland, albeit a completely different state than even the one known as Congress Poland1815-1830).

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In return we have had a rather romantic vision of these 22 months (or so) of partisan hopeless warfare - this romantic version has been written into the Polish psyche by poets and politicians using a slogan: 'Poszli nasi w boj bez broni'('our boys took to the field without a weapon'). The Polish leadership in German-occupied Poland and with the Stalin's Red Army approaching used the same approach of romantic bloodletting in 1944, with known and most tragic results that are still felt in the Bu-Vistula-Oder country.

But then this is our past, one cannot change the history, but hopefully the Poles in the EU and around the world will do the utmost not to repeat the bloodletting and other romantic notions of doing politics by losing lives of the best and bravest and most patriotic etc. 

 

Ironically, when the Uprising was extinguished, some of the soldiers who retreated and surrendered into the Austrian-held Polish provinces, found themselves being shipped, be it by force or strong  persuasion, to Mexico in order  to fight there for the French and Austrian disastrous attempt to create the  Mexican Hapsburg realm. Some ended as French Foreign legionaries, others joined French Army and fought in the  Franco-German War etc. 

 

In  Russian Poland the time after the Uprising was very hard and mournful , many were executed and exiled.  

Many prisoners taken by the Russian Imperial forces were sent to Siberia, but after serving their sentences these Sybiraks became explorers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs  there and ...within the  wide expanses of the Russian Empire, one of the best areas for Polish expansion were  the Caspian Sea oil fields, where our Polish inventors, technicians and engineers prospered and became fabulously wealthy, and in turn used their wealth to created endowments and thus sponsored our Polish academicians, researchers, scientists, national libraries and publishing industries inside the  Russian, Prussian and Austrian-Poland. 

 

In  wake of the Uprising the leaders of Polish Nation worked hard to bring together the entire population, from the noblemen  to peasants, thus in 1918 through 1920 Poland was able created herself by the cunning of our leaders and blood and sweat of our soldiers and all citizens.

For Polish speakers - [in Polish]

Marek Rogowicz na YT popularyzuje bitwy i potyczki powstańczych oddziałów- aspekty militarne według źródeł z epoki:

oto linki do nagrań:
Bitwa pod Żyzynem - 1.

 

Bitwa pod Ignacewem 1863 - 2.

 

Bitwa pod Małogoszczem 24 lutego - 3.

 

Potyczka pod Stefankowem 22 kwietnia 1863 r. - 4.

 

Bitwa pod Staszowem 17 lutego 1863 r.  - 5 .

Potyczki konnego oddziału Bończy pod Gielniowem i Górami - 6. 

A tutaj rozmowa z dr Jaroslawem Centkiem - Wybrane bitwy Powstania Styczniowego.

Naczelnik Romuald Traugutt, wysoce dekorowany oficer armii imperialnej, człowiek honoru a rozpaczy, który rzucił wszystko i poszedł do Powstania honorowo coby zginać, i zginał jako ostatni dyktator Powstania na stokach Cytadeli w Warszawie,  o Powstaniu:

 zrzut za prof.Jacek Kowalskiego wypisem, tamże pieśni powstańcze - Twitter

Chwała Powstańcom i  na pohybel wrogom Polaków. Vivat Polonia na całym świecie.

valate

Pisanki Day - Good Saturday with Chelmonski

 Salvete Omnes,

Peace in Ukraine- may health and joy return. Mariupol after more than a month of urban combat is but a skeletal remainder of the vibrant  pre-24th of Feburary 2022 city. Pacem Eaternam to all who have fallen in this invasion.

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Good Saturday or Easter Eve is a good day to bring back the other painting by Jozef Chelmonski - Four in Hand or Czworka from Warsaw's National Museum. Very similar to or different in some details from  the one from Krakow National Museum, it is another magnificent canvass by the master of horse foreshortening, furious action, landscape and joy of life

In 1874 Jozef Chelmonski made a trip to or escaped  from the Munich art world to the limitless skies of Ukraine. By what his contemporaries and he considered Ukraine should be explained first. For the XIX century Polish world Ukraine* constituted lands beyond Pinsk Marshes, Podolia and Volhynia, those rich soil steppes and rivers and expanses around the ancient Kijow (Kiiv/Kiev) and beyond the great river  Dniepr   into the expanses of the Pontic Steppes.  According to many contemporary sources and his own letters to friends and associates  Jozef Chelmonski loved his trips to the Ukrainian lands, for he loved the light there, and  painting  people and landscapes of the distant Ukraine gave him pleasure and enjoyment. Tadeusz Matuszczak, author of the 2003 monograph about Chelmonski, wrote that Chelmonski had an exceptional visual memory and ability to record images and action in his mind. Antoni Piotrowski, Polish painter who knew well pan Jozef , studied together under master teacher Wojciech Gerson in Warsaw, and consequently wrote his recollections about Chelmonski in 1918, stated that Chelmonski possessed extraordinary ability to record visual images and could 'arrest' images in his mind, so when he returned from his trip in Ukraine he painted various canvasses recreating impressions recorded in his mind. Hence, his galloping horses and flying horse teams  and other spirited riders and mundane cavalry columns. 

Nota bene famous Polish and American actress Helena Modrzejewska was very friendly with Wojciech Gerson's atelier, knew and enjoyed Jozef Chelmonski's brushworks and when she left for USA she took with her one of his paintings -  Return from a ball or night sleigh ride (1873). 

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enjoy your Pisanki painting day, I am about to paint some today. 

Valete

Chelmonski - Czworka - Four in hand from Krakow National Museum

 Salvete Omnes,

War in Ukraine must end - pray for peace. 

..

a bit of hiatus -  so to start the day: Józef  Chełmoński's brushes at work - :)

one of the most famous painting in the history of the XIX century Polish art is the huge canvass by Józef  Chełmoński titled 'Four-in-hand.'

Maestro Józef  Chełmoński painted this canvass in 1881, while he was residing in Paris, then  the capital of fine arts of Europe et al.

 

At the present at the National Museum in Krakow, Poland. There is another version or a similar painting located in Warsaw, National Museum there. 

enjoy

Valete

Spring has come - J. Chelmonski

 Salvete Omnes,

War in Ukraine must stop - 

and so our northern Hemisphere has entered the season of la Primavera aka Spring (Wiosna in Polish). But Spring can be also cold, and some late snow storms could make sleigh ride possible or desirable, especially during the two or three previous centuries (the so called cold period started at the beginning of the XVII century and stayed on until recently, where some warming can be seen - but in the XV-XVI centuries there was much warmer in the Polish Kingdom lands)

let us take a look at some canvasses by of of the greatest Polish painters of the Partitions period - Jozef Chelmonski ( Józef Chełmoński 1849-1914AD) .

Valete