Tatra Landscape

From his youth, Wojciech Gerson led ethnographic expeditions. Between 1849 and 1953, together with the so-called Warsaw Bohemia, he explored the Kielce region, the Lublin region, the Mazovia region, the Kujawy region, the Vilnius region and the Kowno region on foot. The sketches he made at that time were used in the graphic portfolio Ubiory ludu polskiego [Clothes of the Polish People], published in 1855. When, after studying in St. Petersburg (1853-1855) and Paris (1856-1858), he returned to Warsaw, he was an artist thoroughly prepared for his own courses. Erudition derived from the knowledge of history and fine literature and a perfect command of drawing became the basic skills instilled in his disciples. However, the conservative worldview was enriched, by his earlier experiences in the open air and by symptoms of an openness to the realism of Gustave Courbet. In 1860, Gerson participated in the founding of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw and embarked on his first trek in the Tatra Mountains. Its aftermath included genre scenes, such as the academic painting from the Szczecin collection Przysięga na szarotkę [The Swear by the Edelweiss] (1867). At the end of the 19th century, he returned to the Podhale region regularly in summer, between 1885 and 1900 almost every year. At that time, he abandoned idyllic, idealised scenes with shepherds in favour of pure landscape studies. During his stays of several months he created drawings and watercolours showing rocky cliffs, moss-covered stones, streams, ravines with fallen spruces. Gerson mastered the technique of sketching as he took advantage of the luminosity of the paper ground, used a pencil to apply outlines and hatching, which he filled in with transparent or more thickened paint. Notes from his travels and memory impressions constituted the basis for further oil compositions created in his Warsaw atelier. In these works, he continued his interest in Chrystian Breslauer's mountain landscapes but the master idealised the Mediterranean region, Gerson - sincere, direct, reflecting the spontaneity of unpainted nature.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak