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INTRODUCTION
PAINTING
IN POLAND
I
N G A L L E R Y
Scene before a Duel
Old Man and Young Maiden
A Girl
St. Mary's Church
at Night
Four-in-Hand
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Józef Che³moński /1849-1914/ - “FOUR-IN-HAND”,
Oil on canvas, 1881, 38” x 92” (97 x 233cm)
Che³moński spent his best years (1879-1887) in Paris. An artist
highly sensitive to his native climate, he painted a series of
astonishingly lively paintings depicting the richness and variety of
nature and customs in his native land, Poland. Endowed with phenomenal
memory, he painted in Paris where impressionism was then blooming; the
artist totally ignored it and painted realistic scenes of daily life in
Poland: horse markets, farmers and shepherds in the fields, sleighing
parties and noisy returns from country balls.
In time he gained high respect and a wealthy clientele, mainly American,
which eagerly bought his works because of their virtuosity and the exotic
feel of Poland’s eastern borderland which was then highly
fashionable.
Without a doubt, Che³moński’s most popular painting is the famous
“Four-in-hand” (1881), which is a proud part of the permanent
collection of the Cracow Cloth Hall museum. Four full- size horses are
galloping at the spectator and are about to fall on us, giving us no
chance to avoid their hooves. The view evokes the illusion of a wide-angle
movie; our ears are straining to hear the neighing of horses, the drumbeat
of their hooves and the rattling of the carriage. The muddy, gray and
autumnal aura chills us and fills us with melancholy.
Tadeusz Dobrowolski, a recognized expert on Polish nineteenth- century
painting, rightly said that “Four-in-hand” demonstrates such
explosion of movement that it could be a typical burst of Polish
temperament and daredevil élan.
The painting in the Pilsudski Institute gallery is a very faithful and
extraordinarily effective replica of the Cracow original done in Paris by
the artist —most likely in response to an American customer’s
order.
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