Joseph Pankiewicz, Boats in the port of Saint-Tropez, 1908

42.5 x 59.8cm - oil, canvas signed l.d.: Pankiewicz

Józef Pankiewicz (Lublin 1866 - Marseille 1940) painter, printmaker, educator; between 1884 and 1885 he was a pupil of Wojciech Gerson and Aleksander Kaminski at the Warsaw Drawing Class. He then studied for a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Upon his return, he lived in Warsaw. At that time he painted realistic genre scenes and also did illustrations for Warsaw magazines. In 1889, together with Władysław Podkowiński, he went to Paris and there succumbed to his fascination with Impressionism. At the end of the century, he created nocturnes and symbolic compositions. In the following years he traveled extensively in Europe painting still lifes, landscapes and portraits inspired by Japanese art and the paintings of Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse. He spent the years 1914-1919 in Spain. From 1906 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, and from 1925 he headed the Paris branch of the academy, established under his patronage. He was a teacher of many painter-colorists from the so-called Capist group. During this period he lived permanently in Paris, and spent the summer months in the south of France. He was involved in printmaking - his works are among the most outstanding achievements in this field of Polish art. In 2006, the National Museum in Warsaw held a major exhibition "Józef Pankiewicz. Life and Work", accompanied by an extensive catalog, which is a superbly researched, comprehensive monograph of the artist and his work.