Author: Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski
Title: A horse at a standstill
Technique: oil, beveled board
Dimensions: 23.5 x 18.4 cm
Dimensions with frame: 43.5 x 37.5 cm
Signed underneath: "AWKowalski".
The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Eliza Ptaszynska.
Description of work:
Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski is one of the most respected representatives of the Polish artistic colony educated and active in the second half of the 19th century in Munich (the so-called "Munich School" earlier in the literature). The artist gained popularity mainly for his small landscapes, which often showed borderland villages and fields, but he also painted large genre compositions, most often choosing subjects with horse-drawn carriages.
In the offered painting, a horse-drawn wooden cart harnessed to a horse is depicted centrally in the foreground, on which hay and an undefined load can be seen. The animal is shown motionless, while being fed from a trellis. To the right are wooden rails hammered into the ground, one of which shows a ceramic pot superimposed on top. The whole picture is set against a cool backdrop of a vast, muddy, as if covered with frost in places, lowland landscape. The range of colors and the fleshiness of the applied paint fit into the characteristics of the so-called "Munich sauces", as the impasto in places, brown-gray paint layer is sometimes called in studies, perfectly reflecting in the paintings the damp, muddy roads of the countryside. In sum, the tranquility, stillness, mood and colors of the landscape bring to mind associations with a frosty morning.
The character of the composition is strongly influenced by the light, which with its warm color illuminates the sky and peeks out from behind the misty landscape. This way of building the mood in the painting is characteristic of Polish artists associated with the Munich art community in the 19th century, to which, as already mentioned, Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski belonged and in which he was dynamically active. In the painting "Horse at a Stop", the realism of the representation is combined with the described moodiness, referred to in this era of art history by the German term "Stimmung".
Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski's biography is available on the website of Krakow Auction House [SEE].
If you would like to sell paintings by Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski, please contact us [LINK].
