Henryk Siemiradzki, STUDIES OF HEADS, 1874

30,5 x 52,5 cm - oil, canvas glued on cardboard signed twice l.d. and p.d.: H. Siemiradzki



on the reverse

- l.g. sticker of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (stamp, print, ink, typescript): 48439 Author Siemiradzki Henryk | Title Two heads execution | Price W. Przyjemska Wł. Date 25 MAY 1939;

- below sticker (print, ink): ART SALON ST. KULIKOWSKIGO | Warsaw, Krak.-Przedmieście 7 | Author: H. Siemiradzki | Title: Two heads;

- next to a sticker of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in the Kingdom of Poland (print, ink): No. 3965 (269) | Name of author Henryk | Siemiradzki | Type of work | Title Two heads | Dimensions | Price or its value | Private ownership | Address | Warsaw d. 1/14 X. 903 r.;

- above, oval stamp: TOWARZYSTWO ZACHĘTY SZTUK PIĘKNYCH | WYSTA POŚMIERTNA | DZIEŁ | HENRYKA SIEMIRADZKIEGO | W WARSAW | 1903. | w KRÓLESTWIE POLSKIEM;

- next to (in pencil): 3) 2 heads | 4 T zl;

- above (in blue crayon): A;

- l.d. number (in pencil): 826



Provenance:

A painting from the collection of the artist's family. At the time of the exhibition in the summer of 1939, exhibited at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, it was the property of his daughter, Wanda née Siemiradzka Przyjemska (1878-1962).
After Warsaw was occupied by the German army, the featured painting was not transferred to the National Museum in Warsaw along with other paintings from her collection, but had to remain in her hands. Probably during the war the painting went to the Warsaw art salon of Stanislaw Kulikowski.



The painting mentioned and reproduced in:

- Catalog of the exhibition of paintings by Henryk Siemiradzki in the Building of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in the Kingdom of Poland, Królewska No. 17, (title page and text also in Russian), Warsaw 1903, p. 27 no. 186, or p. 33 no. 252 [Two heads];

- Henryk Siemiradzki 1843-1902 (introduction by J. Puciata-Pawłowska), Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw, summer 1939 (Warsaw 1939), p. 21 no. 64 [Studies of heads];

- Corpus of Henryk Siemiradzki's Paintings, ed. by J. Malinowski, Warsaw-Toruń 2020, vol. II, p. 517, item 20G/1-1 [Two Heads].

Henryk Siemiradzki (Pecheny (Belgorod), near Kharkov 1843 - Strzalkowo near Czestochowa 1902) - prominent academic painter; initially a pupil of painter Dmitry Bezperch in Kharkov, a graduate of the natural science department of Kharkov University - from 1864 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. He received five silver and two gold medals for his student works.
In 1871, as a scholarship recipient of the Academy, he went to Munich, where he stayed for a year, studying independently and maintaining contacts with the colony of Polish artists there. From 1872 he lived permanently in Rome; initially he had a studio in via Margutta, and from 1884 in his own palazzo in via Gaetta. Honored with membership in the European Academies - St. Luke's Academy in Rome (1880), the Academy in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris, Turin, repeatedly awarded medals at exhibitions, decorated with state orders (including the French Legion of Honor and the Italian order Corona d'Italia), he enjoyed great recognition and fame. He maintained constant and lively contacts with the country - he sent paintings to exhibitions, and in 1879 donated his famous painting Candlesticks of Christianity to the city of Krakow, giving rise to the collection of the National Museum. He painted curtains for theaters in Krakow (1896) and Lviv (1900; the artist's gift to the city). He sought subjects for his paintings primarily in antiquity; in the history, life and myths of ancient Greece or Rome. But he also created religious scenes (Ascension), genre paintings and portraits. With masterful technique, he painted both monumental, theatrically staged and crowded canvases, and intimate compositions, set either in ancient scenery or in contemporary realities (With the Viaticle, With Comfort and Help). He painted decorative plafonds (Spring, Dawn, Light and Darkness), and was the author of a set of paintings in the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow 1875-1879). He was fond of painting the landscape, treated either as a backdrop to the scenes set in it, and sometimes as an independent landscape plunged into the falling dusk or bathed in sunlight. With particular mastery he recreated the effects caused by light penetrating through the branches of trees, which, as H. Sienkiewicz wrote, cast a strong shadow, among which vibrate golden spots, formed by the sun's rays pressing between the leaves /.../ No one paints the movement of the sun's rays like Siemiradzki.