Fragment of a street with the horizontal view of houses

Jan Kanty Gumowski (1883-1946) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Already during his studies, he worked at the National Museum in Kraków, taking stock of historical monuments. Gumowski's ability to accurately depict the appearance of buildings and the charm of Polish landscapes resulted in the publication of eight graphic volumes devoted to monuments of architecture and wooden buildings, roadside crosses and chapels, which, apart from the reconstructive approach, are characterized by technical excellence. In 1914, Gumowski joined the Polish Legions, and thanks to the portraits of legionaries and views of battle sites created with great sensitivity, he soon became the draughtsman of the First Brigade. At the same time, he collected materials for the volumes he started before the war. One of the earlier ones he devoted to Lublin, where he came several times in 1916. He arrived here for the first time in September, from Chełm, to convalesce after a bout of disinfection. His next stays in the city lasted until 1917, when he probably made drawings and watercolours documenting the monuments of Lublin, based on which he created a series of fifteen lithographic plates included in the Lublin portfolio. Motywy architektury polskiej Jana Gumowskiego [Motives of Polish Architecture by Jan Gumowski], b. 3, published in Kraków in 1918. On multicolour or black-and-white sheets, he depicted mainly the buildings of the Jewish quarter in Podzamcze, the gates of the Old Town, the buildings of the Kalinowo and Tatary districts. Gumowski constructed the boards according to the accepted composition scheme, centrally locating the view of the building and sometimes supplementing it with the ground plan. Among the lithographs depicting the Jewish district there is a sheet entitled Lublin, on which Gumowski presented houses in Zamkowa Street, one of the oldest and most picturesque streets of Podzamcze. The buildings illustrated by the artist were situated in the odd numbered part of the street, almost opposite the façade of the castle. The brick houses of Zamkowa Street, just like those of the neighbouring Szeroka Street, had a double address and numbering system, as the tenement houses on both streets were connected at the back, enabling the passage from one street to the other. Gumowski captured the colourful elevations of Zamkowa Street and the characteristic stepped gables of the tenement houses, which were separated by a wall overgrown with vegetation, hiding a small courtyard.

Anna Hałata