PESKE Jean (Jan Miroslaw) (1870 - 1949), Fountain

oil on canvas, dimensions 63x52 cm, with frame 65.5x77 cm

In 1885 he trained with M. J. Murashka in Kiev. In 1886-1889 he studied at the SSP in Odessa. In 1889 he came to Warsaw and studied at the Drawing Class of W. Gerson. At his insistence, he went to Paris in 1891 and studied at the Academie Julian under B. Constant and J.P. Laurens. He was introduced to the Parisian aristocratic circle by G. Zapolska. He exerted a significant influence on the colony of Polish painters. He also met there, among others, H. Toulouse-Loutrec, who taught him lithographic technique and C. Pissarro, who taught him the etching technique. He was also friends with P. Signac and Marie Sklodowska-Currie, who collected his paintings. For plein-air painting trips he would go to the Côte d'Azur and Collioure, where there is now a museum named after him. The artist's strongest creative impulses were provided by French intimism, led by E.Vuillard and P. Bonnard. He painted still lifes, landscapes of southern France and figures against a background of nature and in the interior. Trees with spreading crowns are also a frequent element in his works. He used oil, ink, pastel and watercolor techniques. His works can be seen at the Georges Pampidou Center in Paris, among others. Motherhood is a theme that has been present in Peshke's work since 1905. At that time, the artist paints scenes of family life filled with the concentrated warmth of motherhood, emanating an intimate, joyful atmosphere. Multiple versions of the undertaken motif are created, one of which is the presented painting. Compared to Peszke's well-known 1905 painting depicting a mother and child amidst garden greenery (Petit Palais collection in Geneva; repr. in the catalog of the exhibition "Kisling and His Friends," National Museum in Warsaw 1997, p. 83), the offered work was executed in a more synthetic manner; it is characterized by a relaxed painterly structure, free brushstroke and fluidity of the color patch limited in places by a delicate contour. The range of intense, pure colors is based on the juxtaposition of warm tones of yellows and oranges with cold blues, pinks and emerald greens. The work is part of an iconographic sequence derived from the work of the Impressionists (M. Cassat), through the Post-Impressionists (Bonnard, Vuillard) to the Ecole de Paris.