Description:
Władysław Podkowiński (1866-1895) was a student of Wojciech Gerson. He completed an illustration internship. He then attended the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1889 he left with Józef Pankiewicz to Paris. There, among other things, at the retrospective exhibition of Monet, he was fascinated by Impressionism. He was one of the propagators of “new art” in the field of Polish painting. The Paris paintings created under the influence of the journey were exhibited in 1890 at the salon of Aleksander Krywult. The exhibition organized in this way (including the works of J. Pankiewicz) was the first manifestation of the new trend in art. Although it was not welcomed by the press, it “officially introduced Impressionism into Polish painting.”* In a masterly way, Podkowiński combined his observations of the surrounding nature with a thorough knowledge of the changes in the perception of colors, depending on the degree of lighting or the proximity of other colors in his works.
Description of the painting:
“The Corner” is painted by the artist during a field trip to Sobótka and Radachówka.** The end of summer has come. A narrow path overgrown on both sides with lush green grass leads to a wooden gate. The shaded area of the foreground is contrasted with the shimmering golden rays of the sun in the background. Behind the wooden fence dividing the composition, there is a view of farm buildings, including a wooden barn with a weather vane in the shape of a rooster crowning the top. Right next to it, a haystack hidden under a hood, a roof supported on four wooden posts.
The composition of the representation leads the viewer’s gaze diagonally along the path. From the shade covering the lower part of the painting, it leads us to the bright depths. The lushness of the vegetation in full bloom is in harmony with the vivid color scheme of the painting, limited to only a few colors: green, violet and yellow. The titular stack remains an indefinite shape with blurred contours, emanating a warm, golden light. The sun, which cannot be kept behind the fence, gently breaks through the wooden fence, illuminating the grass and leaves of young trees rising towards the sky. In Podkowiński’s “Corner”, the contours of the vegetation dominating the composition are blurred under the influence of observed light and color phenomena. The collision of the shaded area with the luminous one introduces a kind of visual dissonance that enhances the mood of the painting, the feeling of longing and nostalgia.