Life and works of Władysław Podkowiński

Public Domain Image: Self-portrait (1887), oil on canvas painting by Władysław Podkowiński, dimensions 55 cm x 45 cm (21.65 in x 17.72 in), located at Muzeum Śląskie, Katowice in Silesia in southern Poland.

Public Domain Image: Szał uniesień (Ecstasy), oil on canvas painting (1894) by Polish painter Władysław Podkowiński (1866-1895), dimensions 275 cm x 310 cm (108.27 in x 122.05 in) currently located at Sukiennice Museum (aka Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art at Sukiennice), a division of the National Museum, Kraków, Poland.

Szał uniesień (titled in English as‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Frenzy of Exultations’, also known as ‘La Folie’ or ‘Ekstase’) is the best known painting of Władysław Podkowiński, and which is considered the first work of symbolism in Polish art, which was exhibited in Zachęta in an atmosphere of scandal, and in 1894 it was featured in a Warsaw art exhibition. However, the art exhibition lasted only 36 days because Podkowinski brought a knife on the 37th day and destroyed his work. The painting was later restored after the death of Podkowiński.

Public Domain Image: Akt (Nude) painting (1892) by Władysław Podkowiński

Władysław Podkowinski (1866-1895) was a Polish painter and illustrator. Podkowiński began his artistic training at Wojciech Gerson's drawing school, the Warsaw Academy of Arts, at which he studied from 1880 to1884. After leaving the school, Podkowinski contributed his art to many of the leading art journals in Warsaw. In 1885 along with Josef Pankiewicz, he travelled to the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Academy where he studied from 1885 to 1886. After returning from St. Petersburg in 1886, Podkowiński started his career as an illustrator for Tygodnik Ilustrowany where he became one its most renowned artists.

Władysław Podkowiński’s earliest works comprising watercolor and oil paintings were created during this time, but Podkowiński still considered his art as a hobby, and not a professional endeavor. His early paintings were mainly influenced by Ignacy Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901), another Polish painter of the late 19th century.

Władysław Podkowiński embraced painting as a profession in 1889, after a trip to Paris where he was profoundly influenced by French Impressionist painters, particularly Claude Monet. Podkowiński’s impressionist works were highly appreciated, and later he was credited for bringing the Impressionist movement to Poland, and many art historians and writers consider him as the founder of Polish Impressionism. But towards the end of his life, his personal life experiences, including an incurable disease of those times, inclined him to shift towards Symbolism. Władysław Podkowiński died of tuberculosis in Warsaw at the young age of 29, which cut short a very promising career, and of course, it was a great loss to the lovers of art.

Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris

PD Image: Portrait of Picasso (1912), oil on canvas painting by Juan Gris aka José Victoriano Gonzales (1887-1927), dimensions 93.4 cm X 74.3 cm (36.77 x 29.25 in) currently in the collection of Mrs. and Mrs. Leigh Block, Art Institute of Chicago.

Gabrielle Cot by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

PD Image: Portrait de Gabrielle Cot, alternative name, Portrait of Gabrielle Cot, 1890 oil painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Francisco Goya on Spanish currency note

Image: Portrait of Francisco Goya, 1826, by Vicente López y Portaña (1772-1850), oil on canvas, 93 cm x 75 cm (36.61 in x 29.53 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Francisco Goya, born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, (1746-1828) was a Spanish romantic painter regarded as the last of the Old Masters and also as the first of the Modern Masters. The imaginative element in his art and his bold handling of paint, colours and brush strokes became a model for the works of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso. To honour him, a 500 Pesetas currency note was issued by Spain, as seen below:

Photo: The 500-Pesetas bank note issued by Banco de Espana in July 1874 featuring Francisco Goya on the face of the currency. The back side is of a different color, as in the other Spanish currency notes of the period.

Manet's 'Self-Portrait with Palette' sold for $33.4 million

Photo: Self-Portrait with Palette (1879), oil on canvas painting by Edouard Manet, dimensions 83 cm x 67 cm (33 in x 26 in), private collection.

A self-portrait by French painter Edouard Manet, titled Self-Portrait with Palette, has sold for a record price of over $33.4 million at an auction in London, Sotheby's said. It was the highest price paid for a picture by Manet.

The French artist Edouard Manet’s 1879 impressionistic painting ‘Self-Portrait with Palette’ (also known by names such as Autoportrait a la palette, Portrait de Manet par lui-même, Manet à la palette, Selbstporträt mit Palette), is one of his two self-portraits and the only one in private collection, the other being ‘Self-Portrait with Cap’ (1879) currently in the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan.

Self-Portrait with Palette has been described as one of the greatest self-portraits in the entire canon of art history. It is the only self-portrait by Manet in which he depicted himself as an artist, though he depicted himself in several other paintings as one of many figures in large compositions in such works as Fishing (1860-61), Music in the Tuileries (1862), and The Ball of the Opera (1873). The painting shows Manet working with his left hand, but it is believed for certain that he was not left-handed, and hence the painting shows a mirror image of him. Also, watch his coat lapel and pocket that clearly indicates a mirror reflection of him, which was used as a model for the painting.

When art historian and Manet’s biographer Adolphe Tabarant asked Manet's stepson Léon Leenhoff about the time at which Manet had been stricken with Syphilis, Leenhoff said it was in 1879, which explains why Manet, who had never before painted a self-portrait, had painted two within that year, possibly with the reality of near-future death, he felt a need to come to terms with himself.

At the auction of the Loeb collection (owned by the collector couple John and Frances L. Loeb from New York) on 12 May 1997, the painting was sold for $18.7 million to the Casino developer Steve Wynn, though it was acquired by the Loebs for $176,800. Steve Wynn displayed Self-Portrait with Palette in his hotel, Hotel Bellagio and Wynn, Las Vegas. In March 2005, it was privately sold to Steven A Cohen, a high profile art collector and hedge fund manager, who, it is speculated, might have paid between $35 million to $40 million.

According to 7 May 2010 reports, Steven A Cohen decided to auction the painting at Sotheby's on 22 June 2010, at an expected price of $30-$45 million. Though it could not live up to his maximum expectations, the painting was sold for a record $33.4 million to the New York dealer Franck Giraud, who was bidding at Sotheby’s sale in London. The Manet painting was among 51 lots in Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art works in a series of auctions in London over the fortnight.

The previous highest price paid for a Edouard Manet was £17.8 million ($26.4 million) for the 1878 street scene ‘La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux’ at Christie’s in New York in November 1989.

Henri Matisse’s ‘Odalisques jouant aux dames’ (1928) was sold for more than £11 million. In February an Alberto Giacometti bronze sculpture has become the most expensive piece of art to be sold at an auction after it was sold in London for more than £65 million.

London this week is hosting a number of auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art works with sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. The other highlights of the auction were paintings by Henri Matisse, André Derain and Chaïm Soutine, which have never appeared at auction before.

Art investment pundits predict that works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse will lead auctions at the top end of the art market, as it is recovering from the biggest slump since 1991.

Portrait of Ria Munk III by Gustav Klimt sold for £18.8 million

Image: Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III) an oil and charcoal on canvas work created by a leading Viennese artist at the turn of the 20th century Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), sold at Christie’s London for £18.8 million on June 23, 2010 – image scanned from an art catalogue.

The full length portrait Ria Munk III (Frauenbildnis) depicts a wealthy young Jewish girl, Ria Munk, niece of Klimt’s major patron Serena Lederer. Ria Munk committed suicide after a row her lover in 1911. Monk’s mother Aranka commissioned Klimt to paint a deathbed portrait of the girl, after his first two efforts were rejected by the family. He began work on Ria Munk III in 1917, painting it in bright colors and showing Ria in repose against a richly decorative background.

After Klimt’s death the following year, the painting hung in the Austrian industrialist family’s lakeside villa at Bad Aussee until 1941. During the Second World War, as part of Hitler’s Ethnic Cleansing plan, that later became notorious as the Holocaust in which an estimated six million Jews were murdered, Nazis captured the house and all the belongings of the Munk Family and ejected them from their property because they were Jewish.

The portrait passed to William Gurlitt, an art dealer. In 1953, Ria Munk III was donated to a gallery in Linz, that later became the Lentos Museum where the portrait remained till last year when it was voluntarily returned to the heirs of the Munk family who had sent it for sale at Christie's on June 23.

Portrait of Ria Munk III sold for £18.8 million, more than its estimated price -- £14-18 million ($20-26 million). According to Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie’s director of Impressionist and Modern art, ‘the picture was only the second or third comparable example of the artist’s work to be offered at auction over the past 20 years’.

Works by Klimt are on the list of the world’s most expensive paintings. According to reports, collector Ronald Lauder purchased Klimt’s 1907 ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ for his New York-based Neue Galerie in 2006 for $144.8 million.

Young Woman with Morning Glories in Her Hair by Jules Lefebvre

Image: Young Woman with Morning Glories in Her Hair (Jeune femme aux liserons?), oil on canvas painting by French painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), 67.3 cm x 54.6 cm (26.50” × 21.50”), located in private collection.

Portrait of Margaret Woffington by Jean-Baptiste van Loo

Image: Margaret Woffington (1738) oil on canvas portrait painting by French portrait painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, dimensions 111 cm x 88 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, England.

Actress Margaret Woffington (1718-1760), popularly known as ‘Peg’, enjoyed a lively and unconventional life, and she was one of the most famous actors of her times. Various artists are known to have painted her. This portrait is not signed, but because of the delicate treatment of the flesh tones and the sensitive rendering of the costume, critics justify the attribution to French portrait painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1684-1745).

Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso

Image: Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906) by Pablo Picasso, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.