Horses pulling a cart

Piotr Michałowski was born in Krakow in a well-off family, thanks to which he had the opportunity to be independent and to develop various interests. Already as a twelve-year-old boy he was interested in literature, mathematics, drawing and music. Due to his versatility, he was called a Renaissance man. He studied natural sciences and mathematics at the Jagiellonian University. He wanted to serve his homeland, but thought that his studies would be helpful when the war broke out. Nevertheless, he did not give up his passion for painting and studied under Michał Stachowicz, Józef Brodowski and Franciszek Lampi. At the age of eighteen, he went to Vienna for the first time, where he came into contact with the works of the old masters.

His favourite pastime was horse riding, which translated into his interest in painting. "The love of art is so foreign to this German land that no one understands the pleasure of sketching a horse. There is a sumptuous English horse in the royal stables, bought for £6,000 sterling; I went to the first master, asking him to have him brought out of the stables so that I could draw him. He opened his big eyes and sent me back to the great horseman. Discouraged and assuming the latter would take me for a madman, I gave up".

In his works, Michałowski often explored genre themes and made animal studies - he painted horses, cows, oxen and bulls. The presented work belongs to a group of watercolours created between 1844 and 1846 in Les Maderes near Tours in France, depicting horses pulling carts with effort. "This is where the horses that pull the carts with such an effort were created, and for which similar carriages were modelled on the Ligiera coast".

Klara Sadkowska