Julian Fałat (1853 Tuligłowy - 1929 Bystra), Winter Landscape

watercolor, gouache
paper glued on cardboard
20.7 × 52.6 cm light passe-partout
Signed l. d.: "jFałat Bystra"

"We are having a wonderful winter at the moment. It snowed all night and the landscape is getting gorgeous and you just have to wait for the first ray of sunshine to paint".

Letter from J. Falat to his daughter, October 12, 1927, MBB/H-FJ/1350

"Fałat amazes with his technique. Not so much in oil, although even here one can see a frenzied mastery of form and tone in broad, bold huge brushstrokes - but in watercolor. No Polish painter feels the water so much in the paint, or rather on the paper (...) He takes tones in unheard of purity, and where needed, in unheard of intensity - not at all inferior to oil. It happens that the pure paper, warm in tone, only here and there in the shadows scratched with cobalt becomes sun-drenched snow. One touch performs a miracle. It is a mastery worthy of Besnard or the best English watercolorists."

E. Niewiadomski, "Malarstwo polskie XIX i XX wieku", Warsaw 1926, pp. 247-248

Bystra - a town that Fałat first encountered in 1902 during a cure stay at a sanatorium run by Dr. Ludwik Jekeles. Located in the Silesian Beskids, the village and the richness of the landscape it offered enchanted the artist from the first moments, influencing his decision to make it his life and artistic haven. It is worth quoting the painter's recollection from this period: "I accidentally came to Dr. Jeakels' sanatorium here in Bystra for treatment. I liked the local nature very much and said to myself that I could live here and work in Krakow. After returning to Krakow I confided in my colleagues about my projects, it was said: Falat wiariat! Who at that time heard to go in these directions: at that time the Krakow-Vienna route was only known and recognized. Not discouraged, the next year I returned again and picked out this place, on which stood a wonderful Silesian cottage. It attracted me with its typical appearance and the colorfulness of the peasant flowers surrounding it, such as mallows, foxgloves and poppies. (...) the prose of life ordered the cottage, though beautiful, to be destroyed and a villa built. I never regretted it." (J. Fałat, Memoirs, Acts cited p. 213). In 1910, after resigning from his position as director of the Krakow Academy, Fałat settled permanently in Bystrá, covering this small spa town. For nearly twenty years, the artist held his favorite studies en plein air, letting himself be enchanted by the Beskid nature. Many landscapes date from this period, among them numerous winter compositions, the so-called Falat snows, coveted by the capital's clientele. The correspondence of Jadwiga Woloszynska, who was in charge of selling the artist's works, is preserved, in which she reports: "Almost every buyer wants to have "Snow" and only snow, to everyone I promise and note to myself, and here the snows are not there and you can't see them, so now I am very much asking Dear Sir, something necessarily send me by mail" (Letter from J. Woloszynska to J. Falat, February 15, 1914, MBB/H-FJ/1498). The artist himself considered winter landscape a graceful subject. In a letter to his daughter he wrote: "We are having a wonderful winter at the moment. It has been snowing all night and the landscape is getting gorgeous, and you only have to wait for the first ray of sunshine to paint" (Letter from J. Falat to his daughter, October 12, 1927, MBB/H-FJ/1350). Among Fałat's favorite painting motifs, which he repeatedly made the protagonists of his compositions, were the valley with Klimczok hill and the mountain ridges of Skalite and Skrzyczne. The painter remained faithful to Bystra until the end of his life, leaving behind a large artistic output. "The list of outdoor motifs he reached for is quite large. It is the result not only of curiosity about the world and sensitivity to its qualities, Julian Fałat's fondness for traveling in the 'company' of a paintbrush, a cartridge of paints and some kind of painting ground, but also an expression of a persistent desire to record the power and changeability of landscape forms and the moods of nature" (I. Purzycka, Julian Fałat. Życiorys pędzlem zapisany, Bielsko-Biała 2017, p. 153).