Jozef Brandt, LANDSCAPE WITH CHATS, 1882

11.5 x 21.5cm - oil, cardboard signed p.d.: JB [signature visible in infrared].

l.d. inscription: Jozef Brandt '82



Attached to the painting is an appraisal by Dr. Mariusz Klarecki dated June 2024.



The painterly sketch described here has all the characteristics of Józef Brandt's landscape paintings of the late 1870s and early 1880s. The composition is painted extremely freely with a skilled hand. The small format leads to the assumption that the painting must have been created outdoors. The painting is in tones of greens and yellows, a color scheme that accompanied the artist in his paintings of the period. An oil sketch in this shape and color scheme could not have been created in the 1860s or the 1st half of the 1870s, nor could it have been created after 1900, when Brandt's color palette, due to eye problems, lost its vivid and sun-drenched colors. The stylistic features, the subject of the painting, the way the composition was built and the paint was laid down, the colors used, the type of signature used by the artist, as well as the format of the work testify to the indisputable authorship of Józef Brandt.

according to the expert opinion of Dr. Mariusz Klarecki

Józef Brandt (Szczebrzeszyn 1841 - Radom 1915) was one of the most outstanding Polish battle painters. He began his painting studies in Warsaw under the tutelage of Juliusz Kossak. In 1858-1860 he was in Paris, where he took up engineering studies. However, he soon abandoned them in favor of painting and trained in the studio of Leon Cogniet. After returning to Poland, he made his debut in 1861 at an exhibition at Warsaw's TZSP. From 1863 he continued his studies at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Franz Adam. In 1870 he opened his own atelier in Munich and soon became the leader, the "general" of the Polish art colony there and a teacher of many painters. After 1877, he spent the summer months in Oronsko, inviting a group of his students for plein-air sessions.

He became an honorary professor at the Academy in Munich (1878), a member of the Academy in Berlin (1877) and Prague (1900). Decorated with high orders, awarded medals and prizes at international exhibitions, he enjoyed a truly European fame. Living and creating outside the country, he always clearly emphasized his Polishness; expressing it, for example, by signing his paintings Jozef Brandt of Warsaw.

He painted battles, skirmishes, drive-ins - episodes from the history of the Polish borderland wars and the Swedish wars of the 17th century, as well as genre scenes - horsemen, hunting, fairs. His colorful, full of movement and workshop-perfect paintings were widely admired as the best example of the then highly regarded "Polish school." But while the German or French viewer saw in them primarily the exoticism and colors of the Orient, for Poles they were canvases "real, natural, familiar like excerpts from the diaries of Pasek or Rzewuski, transposed into colors and lines."