Tadeusz Makowski (1882 Oświęcim - 1932 Paris), Portrait of a boy

pencil, paper, 29.5 × 21.5 cm in light passe-partout
Signed p. d.: T. Makowski

"The child, the soul of the child - this is already a permanent, so to speak, punctum organum of Makowski's work. One could apply here the deeper observation of Professor Paul Hazard, author of the charming book "On Books, Children and People": Makowski, as a son of the North, does not see, or rather, does not look out for, a future human being in the child. Instead, he sees in the adult the former child." It seems that, like [Jules] Michelet, Makowski concluded internally that there is much to learn from a child and that it is worth learning.... Or maybe he just discovered the child in himself. He treated this discovery with his usual "smiling seriousness." (Z.L. Zalewski, "Tadeusz Makowski" (silhouette of the painter and the man), Kurier Warszawski 1933, No. 39, pp.10-11).

F. Biernat wrote about the children's drawings, "The drawing is exceptionally gentle, soft, but expressive and emotional. It has nothing of the conventions of academic drawing, it does not even pretend to be an artistic drawing - it is rather a personal writing, as if confiding on a sheet of drawing paper. Some paintings from this time are merely modeled, as if the painter did not care about the convexity of the form. The melodious rhythm of lines, the subtle light-silver range (...) F.Biedrat [Ch.Aronson], Tadeusz Makowski 1882-1932, "Głos Plastyków" IV, 1935/37, no. 7-12, pp. 54-57 [in:] Anna Wierzbicka, Polish Artists in Paris, Anthology of Texts 1900-1939, Warsaw 2008, pp. 262-263