Landscape with playing children

Aleksander Kotsis is known as a precursor of realism in landscape and genre painting. He began his artistic education in 1850 at the local School of Fine Arts, studying with breaks until 1860). He attended the studios of Wojciech Kornele Stattler, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz and Aleksander Płonczyński. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, there is a work from his early period, when he was finishing his studies in Kraków and received a foreign scholarship in Vienna. Its title is Pejzaż z bawiącymi się dziećmi [The Landscape with Children Playing]. It is one of the examples of works presenting his idealised image of the countryside. It still differs from his later work, in which he manages to achieve an individual character. The painting is characterised by a focus on building a mood in the Romantic spirit. It is created, among other things, by using juicy greens and muted browns. The placement of children against the background of a spreading broken willow tree acquires a symbolic character. The willow is sometimes interpreted as the Tree of Life and Death, reborn in almost all conditions. The performance can be read as an expression of hope - even though the willow is torn apart like Poland under the partitions, it can still be reborn, and this will be facilitated by the young generation.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska