Artystki polskie i ich sztuka od XVI do XIX wieku

Abstract

Abstract

POLISH FEMALE ARTISTS AND THEIR ART SINCE THE 14TH UNTIL 19TH CENTURYLittle information has been preserved on the subject of Medieval Polish female artists, similarly to the artists in Western Europe. Women rarely performed commissions independently. Since the 14th century the guilds started hindering the acceptance of girls as students and apprentices. Female names appear very rarely in guild books. Among the few we encounter are among others: Dorota Koberowa, Agnes Pictrix or Agnieszka Piotrkowczyk. The situation of the artistically talented women changed by the close of the 18th century. In the Enlightenment period a new model of education for the girls of noble birth was accepted. The curriculum began to include the study of the arts, or drawing and painting. Women taught drawing and painting began for the first time to do art. The king Stanisław August Poniatowski supported the talented ladies. Frequently he commissioned works from them. Less often, as in the case of Anna Rajecka, he covered the costs of their education and stay abroad. The most renown artists-amateurs from the royal court circles were: Anna née Krasicka Charczewska, Weronika Paszkowska and Beata Czacka. During the period also Fryderyka Bacciarelli née Richter, the wife of Marcello, worked in Warsaw. The example of the royal court was followed by the magnate courts. To the drawing and painting ladies from the social milieu belonged among others: Maria née Czartoryska Wirtemberska, Emma, Paulina and Wanda Potockie, Magdalena Morska, Adela Łubieńska, Celina Michałowska, Celina Działyńska, Zofia Szymanowska- Lenartowiczowa. The group of the dilettantes grew in the 30s of the 19th century. Imitating the upper social layers the nobility and bourgeoisie introduced to their daughters’ education the study of painting and music. During the period the following female artists appeared: Maria Herman, Celina Letronne or Henryka Beyer. Until the end of the 19th century women were deprived of the possibility of studying at the state higher schools of fine arts. After the collapse of the January Uprising, under the pressure of the political and economic reality and the demands of the suffragists, private vocational courses and schools for women began to appear, which prepared them for work in the areas of the artistic crafts. The most renowned were the courses for women existing between 1876 and 1901 at Wojciech Gerson’s Drawing School in Warsaw and the Artistic Department at the Higher Courses for women established by Adrian Baraniecki in Kraków in 1868. The Warsaw school graduates were among others: Anna Bilińska-Bogdanowicz, Maria Dulębianka, Zofia Stankiewiczówna, Maria Gażycz, Maria Klass-Kazanowska and Ewa Rościszowska-Lorentowicz. The most noted students of the Kraków courses were: Olga Boznańska, Tola Certowicz, Maria Podlewska, Aniela Pająkówna and Maria Wasilkowska. Young ladies as a rule complemented the education obtained at the courses in the higher artistic schools for women abroad, usually in Paris, Munich, Vienna and Berlin. The most popular schools for ladies were: Akadémie Julian and Akadémie Colarossi in Paris as well as Damen Akademie des Kunstlerinnenverein in Munich. Limited knowledge which was available to the women influenced the subjects and the artistic quality of their works. The female artists did not paint crowded figural scenes with the military, historical, religious or mythological representations. Out of necessity they focused on the genres requiring less specialist knowledge. Preferably they painted portraits, still lives, flowers, landscapes and intimate generic scenes. The discussed subjects describe the output of the female painters and sculptors from the end of the 18th century and the following century. The subjects would be constantly present also in the work of the majority of female artists from the early 20th century. Changes in this area would happen slowly, in distinctive manner only in the 90s of the 20th century. It would take place under the influence of changes in women consciousness as a result of the dissemination of the Western and American feminism.