Wojciech Gerson, INSIDE THE FOREST

32.0 x 22.0 cm - oil, cardboard signed p.d.: W. Gerson

On the reverse, illegible inscription in pencil; next to it, number (in pencil): 43 II; below it is pasted a sheet with the handwritten opinion of Dr. Kazimierz Buczkowski, dated July 1944, confirming the authenticity of the painting by Wojciech Gerson; in addition, on the right frame strip a bilingual sticker (in Polish and English) containing a brief description of the painting; on the lower frame strip an inventory sticker of the District Museum in Rzeszow (print): Wojciech Gerson, Forest Landscape, oil, cardboard, private collection, inv. no. | Dep. MRA 2050



Image exhibited and reproduced:

- Unknown Works from a Private Collection, Rzeszow Regional Museum 5 March - 20 May 2015;

- Artistic Credo. Unknown works from a private collection, exhibition catalog 16 XI 2016 - 26 II 2017, edited by Maria Stopyra, Rzeszów 2016, p. 7.



Gerson's landscape paintings are characterized by a realism that was unusual for the time. His perception of nature, combined with his educational activities, made a huge contribution to the development of Polish art. From his early student years at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, Gerson made numerous walking tours of the country. With ethnographic precision, he documented the life of the Polish countryside and poured his admiration for the Polish landscape onto his canvases. Jozef Chelmonski - a prominent pupil of Gerson - brilliantly characterized his master's landscape painting. He considered landscape to be the greatest achievement in his creative career. This is what he wrote in the introduction to the catalog of their joint exhibition, which took place at Warsaw's Zachęta in 1927:
I will begin with landscapes as those works that give Gerson the right to be counted among the first-rate painters. When Gerson began his artistic activity, in almost all of Europe landscapes were understood very ineptly; the concept of the moment in a painting was almost unknown. There is nothing to say about what was in this era in our country either. And in Paris, too, the period of great landscape painters was just beginning at that time, such as Daubigny, Rousseau, Troyon, Corot, Jules Breton and so on. [...] Gerson's works cut themselves off eminently from everything that was then in all our painting. [...] The faint color of which he was accused, being a characteristic feature of his talent, was deliberately sought by him to bring out the effect of immersion of objects, as: trees, human figures, etc. in the atmosphere. And this constitutes all the more to Gerson's credit, since he did it for those times alone, without borrowing it from anyone. [...] Gerson understood lighting thoroughly, one can see, if only from this remark of his, that one cannot see as much in shadow as in light, that therefore shadow cannot be treated as clearly as light. [...] From this profound understanding of nature by Gerson also flowed the fact that he expressed certain moments in nature deliberately indistinctly, that is, as one sees them. This feature of his talent can be observed in many works painted in full sunlight. He claimed that all light effects could be painted, starting from full sun to dark night.



In Interior of a Forest, you can perfectly see what Chelmonski had in mind. The narrow framing brings the viewer closer to a small slice of a summer forest shrouded in soft, diffused light, which translates into a sharp perception.

Wojciech Gerson (Warsaw 1831 - Warsaw 1901) painter, pedagogue; from 1844 to 1851 he studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts under Jan Feliks Piwarski, Christian Breslauer and Marcin Zaleski, and from 1853 to 1855 at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1856 he went to Paris, where he still studied in the studio of Leon Cogniet and studied independently in museums. In 1858, after returning to Warsaw, he developed extensive artistic and public activities. In 1860 he was one of the founders of the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. He taught painting and drawing at the Warsaw Drawing Class and in his own studio, educating several generations of painters. His students included Chełmoński, Wyczółkowski, Stanisławski, Podkowiński and Pankiewicz. In 1878 he received the title of professor at the St. Petersburg Academy. He traveled abroad - to Berlin, Italy, Vienna, Prague and several times to Paris. He traveled extensively around the country, and was especially frequent and eager to go to the Tatra Mountains. He painted genre country scenes, portraits, historical and religious paintings and landscapes - including many Tatra landscapes.