Julian Fałat, A LANDSCAPE FROM SWITZERLAND, 1875 or 1876

16.7 x 25.3cm - watercolor, paper signed l.d.: J Fałat | 1. | 9.

On the reverse (in pencil): 150 -



Provenance: Collection of Ambassador Karol Poznanski (1893-1971) - Secretary of the Polish Delegation to the Peace Negotiations in Riga. From 1927 consul general in Paris, and from 1934-1945 consul general of the Polish Republic in Great Britain.



In 1873, Fałat went to study engineering in Zurich and then moved to Munich. The young artist, being in a difficult financial situation, took a job in the spring of 1874 to build the Swiss Tösstahlbahn railroad. He spent the initial period in an office at a drafting table, but in the summer of 1875 he went "on the line." Enchanted by the Swiss landscape, he spent every free day hiking and painting with watercolors. In his Memoirs, he recalls working outdoors, writing:

I am painting more and more with watercolor and am collecting a multitude of watercolor and pen sketches.

(Julian Fałat, Memoirs, 2nd edition, Katowice 1987, p. 75 [1st edition in 1935])

Julian Fałat (Tuligłowy [Lvov district] 1853 - Bystra near Bielsko 1929) - painter and pedagogue - one of the most outstanding Polish artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, member of Polish and European creative associations and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, repeatedly awarded medals at international exhibitions. He studied painting with Władysław Łuszczkiewicz and Leon Dembowski at the School of Fine Arts in Cracow (1868-71 and 1881) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Alexander Strähuber and Johan Leonhardt Raab (1877-80). After his studies he spent several months in Rome, in 1884 he was in Paris and Spain, and in 1885 he made a sea voyage around the world. In 1886, while hunting with the Prince Radziwill family in Nesvizh, he met the later German Emperor Wilhelm II - for whom he then worked as a court painter in Berlin in 1886-95. In 1894-96 he collaborated with Wojciech Kossak on the Berezina panorama. In 1895 he was appointed director of the School of Fine Arts in Cracow, where he thoroughly reformed the teaching system, transforming the school into a modern Academy of Fine Arts (r.1900). He was rector of the Academy until 1910; after retiring, he settled in Bystra near Bielsko. An excellent watercolorist, he also painted in oils. In his earlier period he worked in the realist convention, with time he lightened and enriched his palette, and in watercolors he introduced an overflowing color patch. He became famous as a painter of hunting scenes usually set in winter scenery; he also painted landscapes, rural genre scenes, portraits and urban views.