Jan Boleslaw Czedekowski (1885-1969), oil on fiberboard depicting an allegory of youth and age, signed at bottom right, Czedekowski B. 1953, Dimensions: 95 x 69.5 cm, all in frame 117.5 x 91 cm
Provenance: private collection USA
Curiosity:
The artist was 68 years old when he painted the painting "Allegory." That year (1953) his wife died (they were to celebrate 40 years of marriage). Bolko (that's what his relatives called him) found the loneliness hard to bear and decided to return to the United States. In Houston he would take up a job and somehow get himself together.
At the travel agency he met by chance a beautiful girl, with whom he fell in love without memory. (She was younger than his daughter). Hertha knew who the charming gentleman was and reciprocated the feeling. She came to see him at Christmas, in the US, and became his second wife.
Why did the artist that year paint an old man, a young woman and a cupid? We can only speculate what he wanted to express through the painting. And a certain detail, which the skilled eye of the viewer will notice in the middle part of the painting, adds to the flavor.
Boleslaw Jan Czedekowski (1885-1969). A painter relatively little known in Poland, as he spent most of his life abroad: in Austria, France and the United States. He spent the longest time in Poland during the interwar period. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After graduating from the academy, he continued to study under the renowned Polish painter Kazimierz Pochwalski. Already at that time he had a reputation as an outstanding portraitist. He made portraits of the social elite - aristocracy and well-known personalities from the circles of politics and the Church, such as President Ignacy Moscicki, Cardinal Adam Sapieha, Sergei Prokofiev, Ralf Modjewski, a talented architect and son of Helena Modrzejewska. He also became known as an unparalleled painter of female nudes. In total, Czedekowski is said to have painted nearly one thousand two hundred portraits. Most of these Paintings are in Paris, Vienna, America in the possession of private individuals and are difficult to access, especially since Czedekowski did not keep records of his works.
Undoubtedly, Boleslaw Jan Czedekowski's mature artistic style was influenced by the art of the Italian Renaissance, 17th-century Dutch painting and 18th-century French art.
He received numerous awards for his works at competitive exhibitions, and was also honored with the French Legion of Honor (1934), the Cracovia totius Poloniae urbs celeberrima medal (1964) and the Order of Rebirth of Poland (1965).
The largest collection of the artist's works is currently in the museum collection of the Łańcut Castle. His works are also part of the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, among others.
