39,5 x 26,2cm - oil, paper In the corners pin marks.
On the back, on the so called "backing" Christie's auction sticker from 2007; in addition, on the upper bar of the frame, Agra-Art auction sticker from 2009.
The painting is accompanied by an opinion by Barbara Brus-Malinowska dated May 2009.
The motif of a fisherman in a boat was taken up by the painter many times and throughout his creative life. For the first time paintings with this motif were painted in Brittany, which Zak visited many times, and whose "primitive" but full of extraordinary aesthetic values folk art, encounter with simple people doing their jobs, subject to the rhythm of nature, were the artist's first creative inspiration. When painting fishermen, Zak sought archetypes of human existence. Many of Zak's compositions with a fisherman, or fishermen, are known only from the titles of paintings exhibited at Paris Salons since 1906, as well as at exhibitions in Germany, London and at home. The human figure in a boat, bent over, hands touching the surface of the water, appears in many of Zak's paintings and drawings. For example, several reproduced in the catalog of a monographic exhibition held at the National Museum in Warsaw in late 2003 and early 2004 can be mentioned. These include: Idyll - a landscape with a fisherman from 1914 (cat. no. 67, il. p. 102), Separation from 1924 (cat. no. 214, il. p. 158), with the motif from Idyll from 1914 repeated almost identically, and the watercolor Fisherman (circa 1923, cat. no. 164, il. p. 140). (from an opinion by Barbara Brus-Malinowska)
Eugeniusz Zak (Zak) (Mogilno/Mohylno in the former Minsk Governorate 1884 - Paris 1926) spent his childhood in Mogilno (Mohylno) and (from 1892) in Warsaw. In 1902 he went to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean Léon Gérôme and at the Académie Colarossi with Albert Besnard. In 1903 he traveled to Italy and was in Rome, Florence, Pisa, Milan. He then traveled to Munich, where he studied with Anton Ažbe for six months. In 1904 he returned to Paris and made his debut at the Autumn Salon. He remained in Paris until 1914, then moved to Vence and Nice. He spent the years 1916-1921 in Poland. In 1921 he went to Germany; he lived in Bonn (where he made polychromes for the villa of architect F.A. Breuhaus), later in Berlin. In 1923 he returned to Paris. He exhibited a lot, taking part in the Paris Salons, exhibitions in Barcelona (1912), Venice (Biennale 1914), Vienna (1915), among others. He also actively participated in Polish artistic life - he belonged to the Polish Artists' Society "Sztuka", also exhibited with the Formists, and was a co-founder of the "Rhythm" grouping. He was one of the most prominent Polish artists of the so-called École de Paris. He sought inspiration in Renaissance art, in the paintings of Cezane and Picasso. In his earlier period, he painted portraits and made - inspired by Renaissance art - sanguine drawings of heads and busts. He also painted idealized scenes in the landscape, lyrical and poetic in mood, and after 1920, figural compositions with one or more figures of shepherds, dancers, harlequins in interiors or landscapes. His paintings are imbued with a gentle mood of melancholy and reverie. The artist subjected the limp silhouettes of the figures he depicted to a kind of stylization - elongating their proportions and giving them supple, almost dancing poses. These paintings are characterized by decorativeness, rhythmic, "dancing" arrangements of forms, soft chiaroscuro modeling, and often textural effects.
