Riders

Artur Grottger was a painter and a draughtsman working in Vienna and Lviv. In Vienna at the Academy of Fine Arts, he studied among others under Karl Blaas, Karl Mayer, Karl Wurzinger, Peter Geiger and Christian Ruben (in 1854-1859). He is counted among the creators of late Romanticism. In Lviv, he studied, among others, with Juliusz Kossak. Under his influence, he created numerous works in which he dealt with the theme of horses. It was a motif that often recurred in Grottger's watercolours from the 1550s, often painted during his journeys and stays in the estates of his friends and protectors. The National Museum acquired the watercolour Jeźdźcy [The Horsemen] from 1858 in Szczecin in 1962. The picture was first drawn and then coloured. It depicts horses in a gallop, in dark tones with a contrasting representation of grey, the other - bay - has been shown in colours similar to the background, in shades of red and brown. The men on the horses are in jackets, one in red, the other in dark grey, and jockey caps.The way of depicting horses is closer to the one known from the works of Piotr Michałowski than Juliusz Kossak. The sketchiness adds lightness and increases the sense of dynamism to the scene.

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