Signed on the underside: Juliusz Kossak/ 1885
The coat of arms of "Trąba" visible on the cap suggests that the portrait depicts a little princess from the Radziwiłł family. Juliusz Kossak gained fame, among other things, for such exquisite representational portraits of horses. The images of horsemen he painted were characterized primarily by majestic steeds with exquisitely modeled and posed figures and sophisticated colors. Kossak's excellent knowledge of horse conformation and movement, which he studied in Parisian riding arenas, allowed him to depict mounts in a virtuoso manner. In the presented watercolor, the eye is drawn to the expressively treated foreground. We see a pony, framed in perspective, statically positioned, on whose back sits safely a small, about two-year-old princess Radziwill. The artist treated the background in a painterly manner, taking full advantage of the possibilities offered by the watercolor technique. With the transparency and flow of paint he skillfully shaped the delicate clouds in the blue sky, thus emphasizing the idyllic nature of the whole scene. He kept the composition in the characteristic range of browns, whites, blues and greens for portrait representations.
The painting is reproduced in:
- K. Olszanski, Juliusz Kossak, Krakow 2000, p. 276, no. 539[Girl on a pony against a castle].
Juliusz Kossak (Wiśnicz 1824 - Kraków 1899) - painter and illustrator - was one of the most popular Polish artists of the 2nd half of the 19th century. He began his drawing and painting lessons in Jan Maszkowski's studio in Lviv; later he drew a lot from nature while visiting noble estates in Ukraine, Podolia and Volhynia. In 1852 he was in Vienna, Hungary and St. Petersburg, before settling permanently in Warsaw. He spent the years 1856-1860 in Paris, where he was friends with Horace Vernet. Returning to Warsaw in 1862-1868, he was artistic director of the "Illustrated Weekly". In 1869, he moved permanently to Krakow, from where he would make further trips to Munich to paint in the atelier of the batalist Franz Adam. Kossak was primarily an accomplished watercolorist; he used oil techniques less frequently. He painted historical and battle paintings, genre scenes illustrating the life and traditions of the noble court and the customs of the Polish people. But the real heroes of his paintings were horses, whose movement, temperament, character and individuality he was able to masterfully depict. He was also the author of many illustrations for magazines and books, perfectly hitting both the atmosphere of literary works and the longings and needs of the audience - readers of Wincenty Pol's Song of Our Land, Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy , Pan Tadeusz and Adam Mickiewicz's poems.
