Landscape (view of Kamionka on the Bug)

The work of Stanisław Dębicki expresses the changes that occurred in Polish painting at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. A graduate of Munich studios, he emphasized the importance of realism and thorough reproduction of nature. His later trips to France sparked his interest in impressionistic light and movement. Finally, becoming a member of the Vienna Secession Society after 1900, he sought a concise and synthetic style, also practicing decorative and monumental painting. These competences allowed him to lead the studios of religious and decorative painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, and to create the painting decor of the Lviv Cathedral.

As a mature artist he realized many themes and used his painting technique freely. The Landscape, painted in 1908, is an example of an impressionistic depiction of landscape. It is dated as November 26th. It shows an autumn landscape of the village of Kamionka with a meandering river and sacral architecture in the far background. The view, shown from a well-defined place, obscuring the full panorama with piled-up treetops, shows different colour accents. The artist, saturating individual fragments of the landscape with colour and light in various ways, at the same time blurs clear contours using blur and painterly sfumato. For the painter, the primary objective is to achieve the unity of the landscape, striving to capture the synthesis of shapes manifested in the rhythms of clouds, bushes, the contours of hills and buildings. The autumn light saturates various parts of the painting with golden, warm hues, presenting a vast landscape rendered in the process of faithful and detailed observation, and simultaneously undergoing mystical dematerialization in the gentle glow of the changing seasons.