Man with a bottle

Franciszek Kostrzewski (1826-1911) was educated at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts (1844-1849) under the supervision of, among others, Aleksander Kokular, Rafał Hadziewicz, Marcin Zaleski and Jan Feliks Piwarski. Thanks to Piwarski, who influenced Kostrzewski's early work, he developed the ability to render the characteristics of figures and analyse landscapes. Together with the artists he met during his studies, including Józef Brodowski, Wojciech Gerson, Juliusz Kossak and Henryk Pillati, he founded the so-called Marcin Olszyński Group, which was called the first bohemian group of Warsaw. The artists gathered around Olszyński - a Warsaw patron of the arts and a photographer - were guided by patriotic ideas connected with the desire to renew Polish painting, which they realized in their artistic activities while traveling around the country and wandering around Warsaw. Kostrzewski's early works were dominated by expansive genre scenes depicted against a landscape background, combining a sense of composition with accurate characterization of folk types, which was a reference to the tradition of Dutch painting. He condemned social involvement and sensitivity to inequality using the language of satire, with time he began to produce humorous watercolours and sketches usually accompanied by a humorous commentary, published among others in: “Tygodnik Ilustrowany”, “Kłosy”, “Biesiada Literacka”, “Wędrowiec”, which provided the artist with financial stability. In his diary, published in 1891, he indicated that one should strive to be funny, create small, cheerful, cheap and up-to-date pieces, and avoid critical features in caricature. Kostrzewski became a chronicler of the everyday life of the capital, reporting on current social, cultural and moral events, stigmatizing the vices of social groups. In his watercolours, which were a satirical commentary on reality, the artist created a bitterly ironic image of a man, characterized by a fatal addiction to drunkenness.

Anna Hałata